Evangelion - The End and After - Revelations
by The Karolingian
Summary: A side story to Evangelion - The End and After. A group of 'potentials', children once chosen by the Marduk Institute as potential Eva pilots, are given a mission to retrieve a powerful weapon with which to fight the returned Angels. They travel to the polar ice cap, but there they find a world of danger and deceit they thought had vanished during the events of Third Impact...


First of all, thanks to everyone who have read or commented on my stories, I really appreciate the positive things people have been saying. The following is actually a side story for my main eva fanfic, The End and After, written as a gift for my watchers on DeviantArt. It contains six OC characters given to me by six watchers, in a setting of my own devising within the TEaA story. The characters themselves may return at some point, and this side story can be seen as a kind of prequel to that main story, so it's all very much relevant to the ongoing events in TEaA. I would recommend reading Book 1 of TEaA before reading this, however. I think it works best if it's read between Book 1 and Book 2.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!

Karoly

-Incidentally, if you want to see the full artwork used for the cover image on this story, or information about the characters and their owners, head over to my DeviantArt page. My username there is KarolyBurnford.-

* * *

 **Evangelion: The End and After**

 **Revelations**

The air was cold and bright over the waters of the far North. What few clouds could be seen in the pale blue sky were high and ragged. Natalie Breton-Fujinami stood at the rail of the icebreaker ship and looked north. Red water and the occasional shred of melting ice passed beneath her vision as the ship moved onwards towards its chilly destination.

The ship they were sailing had been at sea for many weeks, weeks of calm seas and gradually worsening visibility. Its name was _Tor_ , an old Russian icebreaker, old but serviceable. It had been built in the mid-to-late-twentieth century by Finnish shipwrights, before being sold to Sweden and eventually Russia. It was a Grand Old Lady of the sea and where its great diesel turbines occasionally faltered, its hull was thick and well maintained, its crew experienced and durable. It was a castle on the water, huge and constant, complete with layered ramparts and battlements and towers for viewing further out to sea. Sometimes she thought that only the apocalypse could possibly sink it, then she remembered the apocalypse had already tried and failed. Twice.

Although, that wasn't entirely true: the tidal forces that had ravaged the globe during Third Impact had in fact left it beached in literal dry docks, where other places had been flooded under hundreds of feet of red water. Now that red water had receded around the globe, letting life take tentative steps back into the oceans. The _Tor_ had been rescued from the dry bed it had been consigned to and winched and towed twenty miles to open waters, before being repaired and refitted for work once more.

It wasn't long after that Nerv found it and re-purposed it, and only shortly after that, they did the same with Natalie...

"Cold today..." said a voice from over her shoulder.

"It's cold every day," replied Natalie, knowing exactly who it would be behind her, without having to look round. "It's only going to get colder."

"Too cold for you?"

She looked at the breath misting in front of her.

"I don't mind the cold normally, but when it's cold enough to kill you..." She turned and, sure enough, Marco was standing there, that permanent, and permanently mild, smile on his face. "Where are the others?" she asked.

"Oh, they're around, I'm sure," replied Marco, "I can't keep an eye on you kids all the time."

Natalie frowned at his use of the word 'kids', it was a little too close to their captain's attitude to her and her team. But that's what they were: a team. At least, that was what Natalie had tried to make them in the short time they had been together.

"I saw Alex a short while ago in the canteen, getting an early lunch," continued Marco, "Amy and Kiara are probably being kept entertained by the crew as usual, River... well, River could be anywhere, you know what she's like, but I'm guessing she's probably down in the engine rooms again... You and I are the only ones crazy enough to actually enjoy spending an extended period out on deck."

She ignored the 'crazy' remark.

"So are you saying you _do_ like it this cold."

Marco shrugged.

"I don't seem to mind it as much as you and the others. But then, you're all skinny little things. I have the added advantage of my extra layers of whale blubber."

Natalie scoffed. The man was exaggerating again. Marco seemed to enjoy putting himself down: he almost made a habit of it. Sure, he carried a few extra pounds around with him, but that wasn't exactly unusual. Especially in her home country.

"You should have seen some of the people in my home town," she replied. "You haven't seen fat, until you've seen American fat..."

"You forget, I've lived in America for much of my life, so I've seen just as much as you have. Besides, you look to have turned out okay," replied Marco.

She waved this away, dismissively.

"I was in the military."

"So was I," he pointed out.

"Yes, as a technician. You were hardly on the front-lines, were you?"

Natalie caught the ghost of a pained expression on his face, and regretted rising to his bait. He might have been a glutton for self punishment, but that didn't mean he handled others' criticism better than anyone else. She got the feeling his military service was something of a sore point with him, as if he thought rear line support work was somehow less worthy than the life of a full combatant.

Not that she had ever seen real combat, either. The global wars of her childhood had died away by the time she had reached an age where she might even think of getting involved in the fighting. She had joined the reserve officer training corps at the age of thirteen, against her father's wishes, and had then entered Nerv training programs just before the age of fifteen, having been plucked from the ROTC prior to graduation. It was there that she'd met _that girl_ , and had subsequently gained a whole new perspective on the world.

Third Impact had then put paid to any plans she might have had after that...

Marco joined her at the railing, leaning on it as they stared out into the red sea. The blue might be returning around the rest of the world, but here, in the Arctic, the water steadfastly refused to change its hue. Nobody seemed sure exactly why that was.

Pretty soon, of course, the red would be lost beneath constant unending sheets of brilliant ice, and visible only in their wake and down the sides of the hull, where the breaker prow clove the ice to provide passage, but for now, only scraps of white dotted the Arctic water.

The weather had been threatening for the past week, but today, the skies were orange-tinged-blue and the sun was easily visible. The break in cloud had also brought bitter temperatures. A taste of things to come.

"Four more days, the captain says. Four more days and we'll be at our destination. Though, I still don't know where that is...?"

Marco trailed off, looking pointedly at Natalie. He might have been the oldest in their group at twenty-nine, almost twice the age of Natalie and the other 'children' as the captain dismissively called them, but he seemed happy to look to her, as they did, for a lead. In her darker moments, Natalie thought it rather unfair to put such a burden on a sixteen-year-old. Still, it would do her no good complaining about it now. She'd had plenty of opportunity to do that when Nerv had found her again, and after _that girl_ had contacted her.

"You know as much as I do," lied Natalie. "I was told not to open the sealed orders until we reached the appropriate co-ordinates."

That last part at least was true. However, she already knew what they contained.

"Is that why you're always up here staring out into the sea like you're sailing towards some kind of doomsday?" he asked.

She glanced at him. Was he better at reading people than she had thought?

He just grinned back at her from behind his thick-rimmed glasses, and under that humorously big fur hat he had taken to wearing in the chilly North.

"We've already survived the apocalypse, Marco," she replied.

"I survived it twice, actually," he said, and she thought there might even be a hint of pride in his voice at that declaration, "once in my home country, and once in America. I'm a two time survivor. God obviously doesn't want me to die."

He had been born in Costa Rica, she knew. It was one of the countries that had suffered the hardest in the aftermath of Second Impact. War, drought and famine had consumed much of the southern and central Americas forcing many to flee, Marco's family among them. He had emigrated to America in his early teens and had moved around for much of his young-adult and adult life, even after he had joined the armed forces. All of the relevant information had been in the files Nerv had provided her with when she had accepted this assignment: a brief stay in the marines, cut short by declining levels of fitness and apparent lack of application, after which he had been moved to the back lines and had shown accomplishment in technical roles, eventually attaining the rank of 'technical control chief', a position he held for two years before again inexplicably leaving the post, and the armed forces as a whole, to take up freelance work as a special technical advisor for various private military companies. Eventually, he was recruited by Nerv and worked both in an advisory role for Section Two, and in the technical departments of both Nerv Headquarters and latterly Nerv-01 in Massachusetts. He had been there when Natalie had been there, though their paths had never crossed, at least not with either of them knowing.

"You believe in God?" she asked.

"Catholic," he replied. "Lapsed. It's difficult to have a faith after everything we've been through. Then again, I don't have much faith in humanity either, as it stands. We tried to create our own god, after all, and look how that turned out..."

"Then this could all be 'divine punishment', so to speak?"

Marco chuckled darkly.

"I believe we'll find out one of these days, one way or another. Though I doubt we'll like the answer, either way..."

"Don't worry, Marco," she said, touching the badge on her left breast pocket, "this'll all be sorted in a few days time, then we can go back to our boring lives rebuilding the world. Everything will work out fine."

"Maybe you're right," he replied.

She nodded and smiled a smile that didn't feel entirely genuine.

"I'm always right," she replied. "And I'm right about this. 'God's in his heaven', after all."

Marco looked out to sea again, resting on his folded arms.

"You know, that's really not very funny." he told her.

"I know," replied Natalie.

* * *

When the men in dark suits came to her door, she had immediately known who they represented. A chill of fear had gone through her at what their appearance must mean – for her, for this new world, for humanity... None of it could be good.

"Miss Breton-Fujinami?" the older man of the three had asked. She had nodded.

A few minutes later, she had let them into her small home.

The men were led to a small table and chairs in the single room of the downstairs living area. Everything she had was in this room, her meagre possessions, her books, her tools, her mementos of the past. The room was big enough that it could encompass a sink for washing and cleaning, a few recovered armchairs and small coffee table, a larger dining table and a stove. An old cupboard with an inset mirror stood next to a window, with trinkets and tattered copies of disparate reading material placed upon and contained within it. The mirror, however had old curtain cloth taped over it, one corner of which was peeling away and was yet to be re-stuck. One of the men commented on the mirror, querying why it had been covered.

"It's broken," replied Natalie, simply.

They sat in the worn armchairs, with the small table in between them. The two younger men remained standing, however. The man that seemed to want to do all the talking was probably in his fifties, with greying hair and bushy eyebrows. He was clean shaven and dressed in an identical dark suit to those the two younger men standing behind his chair were wearing. If Natalie had been the pessimistic type, she would have said the three men looked a lot like Section Two operatives.

The seated man talked for a long time about the state that the world found itself in, filling her in on things she didn't need to know, like the formation of the European Council, the building of the Japanese city of Kaibyaku, the return of the UN secretary general, the appalling losses of humanity and the world population that hovered of the brink of collapse. He didn't need to tell her these things, she only had to look out of her window to see the rebuilding of life going on, life that had been so close to extinction. He also talked about things like duty and honour, old fashioned concepts in the modern, post-Third-Impact world. All the while he talked, Natalie stared out of the window at the fields around the small community, where good people were planting crops or building houses. She ought to have been out there with them, but instead, she was stuck listening to a man who didn't realise how out of date he was.

When he mentioned the word 'responsibility', she looked at him, and then sat forward. She saw all three men tense slightly and realised that in spite of the fact she was a fraction of their respective ages and about half their bulk, they were frightened of her.

And why not? She was a potential, after all, one of Nerv's chosen. The Marduk Institute had selected her as an Eva pilot, as first backup to the children in Japan should one of them fail in the task of piloting their Eva's. There had even been talk that she might have her own Eva commissioned for her.

That was when she, and the vast majority of the rest of humanity, had been unaware of the Eva's true purpose and terrifying potential.

"My responsibility?" she asked the man, who had shrunk back in his seat as she had sat forward. "What do you know of my responsibilities?"

"I know you feel responsible for a lot of the suffering that people are going through right now," he replied, nervously, "but you have the chance to make a difference again, to do something important."

Sudden anger coursed through her.

"Working for you people? Why on earth would I do that? Why do that, rather than going outside and telling those people labouring to fix what we broke exactly who you are?"

The man's eyes followed her pointing finger out of the window to the people working industriously in the fields beyond.

"You think they would hurt us... and you may be right. But before you do that, just think to yourself: are these three men in front of you really what you accuse them of being? We were all working for Nerv with the best of intentions – _protecting humanity_. We didn't know what disease lay at the heart of the organisation, any more than you did. We didn't know about SEELE and the Human Instrumentality Committee. If we had, we too would have done things differently."

Natalie sat back into her chair, frowning. It was an honest answer, one she hadn't expected and couldn't argue with. Despite what had happened, the majority of the people working for Nerv were doing so for the right reasons – or at least for everyday reasons like supporting a family or building a career.

The man saw her discomfort and reached into an attaché case at his side.

"Please, have a look at these."

He placed five files on her table. She eyed them suspiciously, but didn't reach out for them. They had names on them, and photos paper-clipped to the corners.

"What are these?" she asked.

"They're files on the rest of your team," he replied. "You are right, of course. We _would_ like you to come and work for us again."

"Why?" she asked, staring directly at him. The man looked a little flustered by the direct question. He glanced at the two men behind him, but they only looked impassive, not offering any help.

"Well... because you're needed," he said, turning back to her. "You _do_ still want to help protect humanity, don't you?"

She glanced out of the window again, at the busy, industrious people. She knew what her father would have wanted her to do. He'd been an army colonel, retired long before Nerv had ever come calling for her, but had served during the global wars that had torn the world apart after Second Impact, had seen its horrors and had been against her enrolment in the ROTC and her recruitment by Nerv – vehemently so after her mother, a technician at the Nevada branch, had disappeared, along with the rest of Nerv-02, during the S2 implantation experiments.

He would have wanted her to stay, to help rebuild, to put her past behind her and settle for a simple life...

"I'll think about it," she said.

"Don't think for too long," he replied, snapping his attaché case closed again. "There's a ship docked at the old Boston harbour, waiting for you. It'll wait for a week, no longer. It's name is the Tor, an old Russian icebreaker. Further instructions will be awaiting you on board."

"I'll think about it," she repeated.

The older man glanced at the two standing behind him. They knew their time was up. He stood and offered a hand to Natalie, and when she didn't take it, he straightened.

"I know you don't like us, Miss Fujinami, but I hope you'll still consider this seriously. You were destined for great things before... well, before. I hope you can see that there are more ways to help humanity than building houses."

Natalie didn't reply, but she stood and showed them to the exit. As the three men passed through her front door, the older man turned back as if he'd remembered something.

"Oh, one last question before we go, if you wouldn't mind? I wonder if you've had any contact with the girl Mari Illustrious Makinami?"

Natalie frowned.

"She was in the same Nerv programme as me. The instructors called her the 'problem child', which was understandable: she went missing shortly before Third Impact."

The man winced at her mention of the near apocalypse.

"So you haven't seen her since?" he asked.

"No, of course not," she replied. "Why would you even think I would?"

He looked disappointed.

"I understood you two were quite close at one point..."

"Well, you heard wrong," replied Natalie, "that girl was a menace, reckless and thoughtless to everyone around her. If it had been in her interests, she would have let all of her friends and colleagues die without hesitation!"

"Ah, I see," he replied, looking a bit taken aback by the vehemence in her voice.

* * *

When they had gone, Natalie turned back to the living room. She crossed the floor to the cupboard that stood between the window and the wall. Down the side of it, in the corner, almost out of view and gathering dust, a long squarish case sat on its end. It was covered in worn synthetic fabric of a dark blue and had a zip that circumnavigated its slender bulk.

Natalie looked at it for a long while, wanting to pick it up, but fearing what it would mean if she did.

"They were asking after me?" said a voice from behind her. She looked around to see the girl walking down her stairs and into the living area. Her long brown hair was tied in low pigtails, the way she always remembered her wearing it, but she was dressed in dark blue jeans and an old army jacket from some obscure pre-Impact militia. The oval rimmed glasses she wore did little to mask that familiar confident half-smirk Natalie remembered from old times. Mari Illustrious Makinami had never lost that look in the entire time she had known her.

"They were," she replied. Looking back at the case.

"I told you they would come," said Mari, lightly, "didn't I tell you?"

Natalie sighed.

"Yes, you told me."

"So what are you going to do? Does that case come out of its dusty corner? Are you going to get back in the game?"

Natalie whirled on her.

"Is that all this ever was to you?" she chattered. "A game? People _died_ , Mari! Millions of people! The world nearly died with them."

"But it didn't," replied Mari. She was grinning her dangerous grin. "We tried to save as many as possible, didn't we? Didn't we agree that this is what happens when you leave the running of the world to the adults? To old men in dark rooms?"

" _We'll_ be adults soon," countered Natalie.

"But we'll never be old men," said Mari, her grin widening.

Natalie sagged and sighed. She'd never been able to deal with Mari. She didn't even understand why Mari took any kind of interest in her at all. The Brit had outdone the whole class in every test score going, even Natalie had had trouble keeping up with her. If it wasn't for her rebellious nature, she'd have been first in line for an Eva, rather than Natalie herself.

But of course, Mari had known that. She had intuitively seen the cancer eating at Nerv and had removed herself from that equation, preferring to try to do things her own way. If only Natalie had listened and done the same...

"What do they want me to do?" she asked.

Mari shrugged. Then she leaned over the table and began looking through the files.

"I'm not sure, but if they're putting you on an icebreaker, it stands to reason your destination is either Arctic or Antarctic."

"You knew they were coming, but you had no idea what for?" asked Natalie.

"Whatever it is, it's important," replied Mari, leafing through bits of paper. "They've got a whole roster of potentials here. I know some of these kids... Not personally, just through investigation."

"I don't doubt it," replied Natalie, picking up one of the files. The name on the front read 'River Knight'. The photo clipped to the corner showed a skinny girl about her age, with messy brown hair that fell into her face and dark rings that underlined soulful eyes.

"My guess is, these guys will know even less than you," said Mari, dropping the file she was holding back onto the table. Then she reached inside her jacket, pulling out some papers of her own from the inner pocket. She handed Natalie a photo. "I've done my own digging around. This is the man you have to look out for, everyone else you're going to meet is likely window dressing."

She looked at the photo in her hand. It showed an elderly man with an unremarkable face and greying hair.

"Who is he?" she asked.

"If I knew, I wouldn't need you to get on that ship," replied Mari with a grin.

"So all you really want is a fall guy," said Natalie.

"Not just any fall guy," replied the Brit. "No-one can do it but you."

Natalie glanced at the blue case by the cupboard.

"I nearly killed that boy," she told her old friend.

"Then do this as some way of making up for what happened. Things are moving again and I can't see to all of it. I _need_ you, Natalie."

She knew what Mari was doing. She was appealing to her conscience – and she was doing a better job than those three men had. She stood and walked to the cupboard. For just a brief moment, she caught sight of her reflection in the uncovered corner of the mirror, but quickly looked away again, directing her gaze instead back to the dark blue case.

"So you want me to go sailing off around the world at your whim," said Natalie. "And what is it that you'll be doing in the meantime?"

"Oh... I'll be getting into trouble, as usual," replied Mari.

Natalie took a deep breath, then nodded and reached for the case.

"As it should be."

* * *

 _Tor's_ journey had taken it on a winding route, starting in America where it picked up the first two of its passengers, Marco being one and the girl Natalie the other. It had sailed across the Atlantic, stopping in Lisbon, Portugal to take on supplies, before travelling north to Portsmouth in the UK, where three further members of his team came aboard. Their last stop had been Bremerhaven in Germany, where River Knight had reluctantly joined them. The final member was also a child.

At twenty nine years of age, Marco didn't think of himself as old, but when all five other members of his supposedly elite team were virtually half the age he was, sometimes he felt less like the group's technical and communications expert and more like a common babysitter. It had been a surprise to meet the leader of his unit all those weeks ago in Boston harbour and to learn that she was a sixteen-year-old girl. That surprise had melted into disquiet as each new member had joined, each of them as young as the last.

He tried not to let it show on his face, attempting to keep upbeat, more for his own sake than for that of the 'children', as their captain insisted on calling them. It didn't help that their mission to the frozen north was so vague. Sometimes, he regretted agreeing so readily to leave his menial position at the Boston technical council. Fortunately, Natalie at least appeared to have her head screwed on. The others, while enthusiastic, were not quite so mature for their age as she appeared to be.

Their passage then took them north, round the Norwegian fjords and into open waters. Now they were a day's sail from Svalbard, their last sight of land before they hit the ice fields of the Arctic. And still their ultimate destination remained a mystery to them, a secret kept by one more passenger, who had been on the boat even since before Boston.

The woman from Nerv was in her late thirties, and was as cold as the ice fields they would soon be entering. Her blonde hair and sharp face were not unattractive, but Marco would never think of making a pass at her.

Her name was Lind. She was of mixed background, with a strange, unidentifiable accent, possibly part German, maybe part Scottish. She spoke English and Japanese fluently, but rarely conversed with Marco and the others, or even with the crew. In fact, it seemed she very rarely even left her cabin, so it had been a surprise when she had called them together in a private conference room.

River, as usual, was the last to arrive. The others all watched as she stalked into the room and took her place at the round table, where she sat back in her seat and folded her arms, disinterestedly looking away from the others, her expression neutral.

Lind looked around at them all. Alex Rodgers, a tall young man from the UK with a mop of blonde hair, brown eyes and a carefree expression on his handsome face. The Sakurai twins, Amy and Kiara, who looked so similar, even though they had different coloured hair and eyes, Amy's being long and lustrous black with bright, almost icy blue eyes and Kiara having beautiful auburn hair of a similar length that she always tied in low pigtails, and hazel eyes flecked with molten gold. Natalie Breton-Fujinami, their leader, was athletic, with dark hair that she always tied up in a ponytail and ever present glasses with thin metal rims. She was looking at Lind with an expression of such utter focus, Marco thought it was a wonder the woman didn't burst into flames.

"Now that you are all here," began Lind, "I can tell you what it is you are here to do. I believe I gave each of you sealed documents with orders for your upcoming mission and instructions to open them only when I called you all together like this. The time has come for you to open them."

Marco felt in his pocket and drew out the envelope he had been given upon boarding the _Tor_ in Boston. It bore his full name – Marco Antonio Salazar Matamoros – and was stamped with the Nerv logo. He looked around the table, waiting for the others to do the same.

"Oh, those," said Natalie. "I opened those the night I came aboard in Boston harbour."

Alexander looked at her, then at Lind.

"Ummm, yeah, Portsmouth for me, but... yeah..."

River reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a crumpled and obviously opened envelope, tossing it on the table. Even Amy and Kiara glanced guiltily at one another. Marco began to feel a little foolish at having kept his in a safe place, unopened and unread. He hurriedly broke the seal on his envelope and pulled out the single sheet of typed paper, scanning it quickly.

Lind watched him and smiled a tight smile.

"Well then, I suppose this will go a bit quicker," she said.

"Wait," said one of the Sakurai twins, the auburn haired Kiara, "before we go any further, I want to know why Amy and I are here."

She looked at her sister, who nodded.

"Excuse me for saying," said Amy, picking up where her sister had left off, "but this seems like a military operation of some kind. Kiara and I... well, we aren't really soldiers or anything... so... I mean..."

She trailed off, looking nervously at her sister.

"Why us?" asked Kiara, clasping her hands on the tabletop. "We've had no training, we've never even left the UK before, except on school trips. Well not since we were little kids, anyway. Everyone here has been so nice to us, but... why are we even here?"

"It said in the orders that we were to retrieve something," agreed Alex. "I've had _some_ kind of training, I was in the air cadets, after all. Natalie has too, she was even part of Nerv –"

Natalie looked at him sharply, surprise on her face. Alex noticed and looked apologetic.

"I wanted to be an Eva pilot," he said, "I was an avid follower of potential pilots... plus my mum was a politician and dad was in Section Two, so naturally I knew about you and Asuka, Mari and Shinji... even Rei Ayanami, though I didn't know what she truly was, until... well, you know..."

"What _was_ she?" asked Kiara, "I still don't know. I have these memories in my head, but I can't seem to make sense of them..."

"If you wouldn't mind," said Lind, her cold voice cutting through the chatter like a shard of ice. "If you're quite finished, we can proceed."

"He's right, though," said Natalie, sitting forward and fixing Lind with a hard stare. "Why send schoolchildren on a mission? Why not a unit of soldiers?"

"Because of your _nature_ ," said Lind.

Silence followed her words. Clearly four of the five kids were confused by this, even River was studying Lind with a sidelong look, her dark ringed eyes peeking out from where her wavy brown hair fell into her face.

"Each of you, save for Marco of course, were marked by the Marduk report as potential Eva pilots," clarified Lind, "all of you were the right age, you were all possessed of qualities consistent with the requirements of piloting – yes, Kiara, even you and Amy. It is this fact that is important in your coming mission."

Amy, Kiara, Alex and River all looked astonished at this revelation, although, to Marco, Natalie looked as if something she had suspected had just been confirmed.

"Why do you need potentials?" asked Marco. He held up his orders. "This says we're to retrieve something from the polar ice cap, why would you need potentials for that?"

It also detailed his involvement in the mission. He was to be the technical support, the communications officer and their link with the boat.

 _So not only will I be babysitting these kids, I'll also be hauling heavy equipment across the polar landscape!_ he thought to himself, wryly.

"What are we looking for?" he asked, placing his envelope on the table again.

"An artifact. A very powerful weapon," said Lind, directly.

"Why? Who needs a weapon?" asked Alex.

"Humanity."

Five of the six looked at one another, the only one who stared straight ahead was Natalie. Her eyes never left the woman.

"We believe that your destination is the site at which mankind's greatest weapon now lies, and no, I don't mean the Evas. This is a much older weapon."

"What is it?" asked Natalie.

"Longinus..."

The name hung in the air for a very long time, until–

"Umm... what's Longinus?" asked Amy.

"The Lance of Longinus is the fabled weapon used to pierce Christ's side as he was crucified on the cross," said Natalie, recalling her lore. "Isn't that right, Marco?"

He nodded and picked up where she had left off.

"There were supposedly relics claiming to be the original lance held in museums and reliquaries all over the world, though none were ever proven to be genuine. This lance, however, has had the name attributed to it after the fact. Or perhaps not. Perhaps this was the original Longinus, that all others were pale imitations of."

"But I thought Longinus was destroyed along with the mass produced Evas?" said Alex.

"They were also just copies," said Lind. "Another lance was created by Shinji during Instrumentality, but the real Longinus was taken in by Rei. It would be within her body. Within her remains."

"And her remains...?" asked Kiara.

"Are near the North Pole."

They looked at one another.

"You still haven't answered why you needed us rather than a unit of trained soldiers to retrieve it," said Alex. Marco was starting to appreciate the clear thinking of the fifteen-year-old boy. In fact, wasn't it the case that all of the 'kids' were reacting with remarkable maturity to the situation that thrust itself upon them?

Lind stood up and retrieved a case from across the room. She set it on the table and opened the clasps with quick snaps, setting the top up so she could get inside. From its confines, she drew several large photographs that she tossed onto the table. Hesitantly, they each reached for one. The images were of aerial surveillance photos. They showed a series of dark boxes against stark white snow. A quick count revealed there to be sixteen of them, all lying in what appeared to be a deep crater in the polar cap. Something about that number rang alarm bells with Marco.

"We have reason to believe the lance, or parts of the lance have been contained within one or many of the objects you see in those photos. We have reason to believe that they are boxes or containers of some kind and that they are manufactured from some form of Eva technology. It stands to reason that they will not open to just anyone. It is my belief, and the belief of many in the new Nerv organisation, that those considered to be potentials by the Marduk report are most likely to be able to sync with these containers and access their contents.

"You are all of the potentials that remain available to us at Nerv. To give us the best possible chance of a successful retrieval of the lance, we need all of you."

"Well, that answers all of my questions," said Alex. "Frankly I'm finding all of this quite exciting!"

Natalie turned a severe expression on him, and he wilted slightly under her glare.

"I have one last question," said Marco. "You say you need this 'weapon' for humanity's sake. But Longinus was beyond deadly and was easily misused before. I want to know why humanity would need a weapon like that. What possible reason would you have for wanting it?"

"Because, Mr Matamoros," said Lind, her voice as chilly as ever, "the Angels have returned."

* * *

The _Tor_ sighted Svalbard during the night, though actually due to the shortened daylight hours in the far North, it being late winter, it was actually more like mid-to-late morning. Alex had been awake for hours, having taken breakfast early, and had been brooding in his cabin when the shout went around the boat. At first, he thought there was some kind of emergency, and jumped out of his bunk. When he opened his cabin door, Amy stood there, hand raised as if she had been about to knock, and a startled look on her face.

"What's going on?" asked Alex, craning to look into the corridor. Crew members were jogging past. "Is something wrong?"

"No!" squeaked Amy. She lowered her hand and cleared her throat. "It's Svalbard. We're coming up on Svalbard. The captain thought we'd like to see it with the sun coming up behind. He says it's quite beautiful..."

"Oh," said Alex, bemused, "okay. Let's go then."

"Kiara says we've got to get Natalie, too. She's getting Marco and River. I think she's got something planned..."

Alex pulled on his Nerv issue jacket and a pair of mittens and they went down the corridor to Natalie's room.

"What's going on?" asked Natalie, who swung the door open as soon as they knocked. She was already fully garbed in the winter uniform they had each been given and had her case slung over her shoulder. "Are we under attack?"

"Attack?" asked Amy, frowning. "Who would be attacking us?"

"Never mind," replied Natalie.

Alex glanced around her cabin. It was the same as his; small, with a table and bunk, a mirror on the wall behind a table and a porthole window. Alex saw that for some reason, Natalie had pulled the porthole curtain down and hung it over her mirror.

"Problem?" asked Natalie, looking at him. Alex jumped.

"N-no," he replied, embarrassed at being caught.

"What do you want, then?" asked Natalie, a little irritably.

"Kiara wants us to go up on deck," said Amy, excitedly.

"Why?" asked Natalie.

"It's Svalbard," explained Alex. "The crew have just sighted the island. I think we're going up on deck to view it."

"Come on, Nat," urged Amy, and she seized Natalie's hand, dragging her forward, "you don't need to bring that," she continued, indicating the case over Natalie's shoulder.

"I think I'll keep hold of it," replied Natalie, but she allowed herself to be pulled out into the corridor. Alex grinned at her apologetically as they began making their way through the innards of the ship, up to the forward decking.

As they emerged into the slowly lightening gloom up top, they found Kiara and Marco already there waiting for them.

"Come on," urged Kiara, "it's really beautiful, even before dawn." She led them around the side of the main superstructure, to the upper foredeck. "I couldn't find River," she continued, "so she'll just have to miss this and more fool her for never –"

"Miss what?" asked a voice. Kiara jumped and squeaked in surprise, looking up to where River was seated on a covered winch, arms wrapped around her knees and gloved hands loosely clasped together. The young German looked down curiously at them.

"There you are!" exclaimed Kiara. "I was looking all over for you!"

River stood and jumped down from the winch, landing lightly on the deck.

"I've been here for half an hour waiting for the sun to come up," she said, with a nonchalant shrug. She brushed the hair out of her eyes and looked around at them. "What took you all so long?"

Alex thought there was a slight smile on her face. He found it difficult not to like the girl, in spite of her generally aloof and antisocial demeanour. She was definitely the strangest of the six-strong group, an enigma as soon as she had stepped on board.

Alex had been contacted by Nerv while in the Greater London megatropolis. He didn't know how they had found him, none of his family (that he knew of) had returned from Instrumentality, certainly not his parents, his politician mother and security specialist father. When he had decided to leave the sea of souls, Alex had felt intuitively that he had his parents blessing to do so, but the discovery that they had not also decided to join him had been hard to bear. In the aftermath, he had been struggling to survive in the remains of the once great city, working with other returnees to grind a life from the shattered buildings and crumbled institutes. When Nerv had found him, he had jumped at the opportunity they had presented, an opportunity for meaning and even adventure, the desire for which had once flowed strong in his veins. It was true he had once wanted to be an Eva pilot, and when that had seemed an impossibility, he had transferred his energies to becoming a pilot of planes. The Air Cadets had been his route to that end. From there he would have moved into the full RAF. He had trained in gliders and had had a few flights in light aircraft, but Third Impact had begun before he'd had the chance to accomplish his goal.

His desire for excitement and adventure had become a guilty memory after that, when the world needed to be rebuilt. But even that guilt hadn't quenched the thirst.

Being found by Nerv had been both the culmination and the shattering of that guilt, as he found true purpose again, purpose beyond the simple struggle for survival. It felt like an honour to join with people like Natalie and Marco. True, Amy and Kiara had seemed like strange choices to be along for the mission, having no military background as they did, but even that became clear with the revelation about them all being potentials, each one of them earmarked by the Marduk Institute (and the real puppet-masters behind that sham company).

But River had felt different from the start.

As soon as she had joined them at Bremerhaven, he had known there was something about the girl that went beyond the ordinary. He wasn't sure if the others had come to the same conclusion, but her demeanour, her reluctance to board, even while standing on the gangway ramp, her apparent need for seclusion from the others, and her mysterious nature, all contributed to the feeling there was more to her than she let on. It was not that she was unfriendly, of course, if anything she was as shy as Amy and as amiable as her twin sister Kiara, but there was a sense to her that she had her own secrets, secrets she would be loathe to give up, even to her team mates.

Alex suddenly realised she had noticed him staring at her, and he looked away, a slight blush leaping unbidden to his cheeks.

"Well," said Kiara, "now that we're all here, I present to you... Svalbard!"

She gestured across the deck and out to sea. In the distance, with the lightening sky behind it, was a mass of snow covered land, hills and mountains growing out of the sea. The mountains were like pale violet smoke between the yellow-blue sky and the deep red seas.

"Well, it _is_ beautiful," said Natalie, with grudging admiration. "Thank you for calling us up here to see this, Kiara."

"That's not all I brought you up here for," replied the girl, her eyes shining with glee. She looked upwards. "Captain? How long?"

The captain, a curmudgeonly old Russian seafarer, was standing with several of his officers on an upper viewing platform of the superstructure. With a fierce eye, lined face and weather-beaten brow, hair as white as snow under his captain's hat and a beard to match, he had been a quite intimidating presence when Alex, Amy and Kiara had first boarded in Portsmouth, and had been as dismissive of the 'children' as he had been sceptical of their mission.

His attitude had softened as they had journeyed north, particularly, Alex thought, because of the antics of Amy and Kiara, who were both generous with their time and their good humour and always happy to keep the crew amused, even if Amy was shy and reserved

The captain rested his hands on the rail above them and called down to Kiara in his gruff, accented voice.

"Any minute now, _baryshnya_ ," he told her, "you're all ready, I take it?"

"Yep!" she replied, then she turned to Alex and the others. "Over here, over here!" she said, ushering them all across the deck to the far rail, with Svalbard beyond. She rummaged in a small bag at her side and drew forth a compact digital camera.

"That's mum's camera!" exclaimed Amy.

"Yep," agreed Kiara, happily, "she leant it to me and told me to take as many photos as possible while we were away. Stupid me, I only just remembered I had it!"

She crossed the deck again to a crew-member who was waiting there for directions, passed both the camera and the bag to him, then proceeded to talk the young man through usage of the device.

"Here it comes," called the captain.

Kiara squealed in excitement and skipped back to the others.

"Turn around, turn around!" she cried. "You'll miss it!"

They each turned and looked out to sea. As they watched, the sun finally broke the horizon, a fiery disc sliding from behind the mountains, bathing the scene in orange and gold. The snow lit up like fire, and even the red sea seemed to glow, scads of floating ice picked out in incandescent flares as the sun shone down upon them.

"Wow," gasped Amy, and Alex had to agree with that sentiment. It was one of the most spectacular sights he had ever set eyes upon. It was so beautiful, he briefly wondered how such terrible suffering could possibly be, how cruel man could be to his fellow man, when sights like this existed for anyone who wanted to see them.

They watched for several long moments, a stunned hush keeping them riveted to the view, until–

"Right, gang, time to turn around!" said Kiara, ushering them all about again.

They all turned to see the crew-member holding the camera ready. Feeling amazingly at peace, Alex leant against the rail and looked around at his companions. Kiara had grabbed onto Amy and they were each grinning cheesy grins (Amy's being slightly startled as well) and holding up V-signs with their free hands. Marco was looking a little exasperated at their childish antics. Natalie still had her case slung over one shoulder, but she was smiling as she watched the Sakurai twins. Even River looked happier than he had ever seen her, a faint smile on her face. She glanced at him and he grinned back at her before turning forward again.

"Say cheese!" giggled Kiara.

"Cheese!" echoed Amy.

The camera clicked.

* * *

At 3am the following morning, the captain called them up on deck again. River had known instinctively that this was no social call this time.

Having only dropped off half an hour before, she was roused from dreams of a dark coffin and twin pools of blood amidst whitest snow, and it took her a good few moments to associate the sounds she was hearing with someone banging on her cabin door.

"What is it?" she croaked from a too dry throat. She cleared it and called again, louder this time.

"The captain wants to speak to us," said Natalie's voice. "It sounds important."

River rolled herself out of her bunk and began pulling on her Nerv issue winter garb.

"Coming!" she called back.

The logo on the breast of her jacket caught her as it always did. The fig leaf and the quotation. The fig leaf was a symbol of knowledge and truth, the quotation, "God's in his heaven, all is right with the world," a representation of authority and trustworthiness. But the fig leaf was cut in half – and that was all Nerv had ever had to offer: half truths, hidden knowledge, plans unseen, the illusion of a benevolent shield. The inner workings had always been different to the outer façade.

She knew they were not in possession of all the facts, none of them, not even the captain, probably not even Lind. The others might have their reasons for being on this boat, Natalie might even know a bit more than the others, she was supposed to be methodical and careful, after all, and would likely have found out all she possibly could before agreeing to come along, but to River, there was absolutely no reason to trust this new version of Nerv. Nerv had never played the truth straight. The half leaf and the half truth, that was their way. Knowing that as she did, River should never have agreed to work with them after Third Impact...

And yet, here she was. Just why she was here was still partly a mystery, even to her, but it undeniably must in part be due to the dreams. She remembered standing on the gangway at Bremerhaven, trying to force her way up the ramp onto the ship, the stern eyed captain impatient on the deck, her uncle exhorting her gently from the docks, the five others in her 'team' looking down on her with curious bemusement at her reluctance to join them. It had felt like climbing a mountain, stepping up that short flight of steps, the vivid dream from the night before playing out in her head as she moved unsteadily forwards. Snow and blood and eyes of red.

"River?" called Natalie, through the door.

She jumped and pulled the jacket on, zipping it up quickly.

"Coming!" she called again, pulling on thick boots and lacing them, before doing the same with her large mittens. She liked the cold, to her it felt more relaxing than the heat of summer, but even then she knew the cold of the Arctic could be fatal without adequate clothing, especially at night.

Natalie was still waiting for her when she opened the door. She looked a little impatient.

"What were you doing?" she asked.

River didn't know how much she could trust Natalie, she had been a full member of Nerv in the past, though she seemed a little less inclined to go along with them now.

"I couldn't find my gloves..." she lied, not wanting the other girl to know her own mental state was not as strong as it could have been.

Natalie looked around the small cabin. There was little enough in the room which would facilitate the possibility of 'losing' things; a bunk a sink, a table and chair, a small storage locker...

"Whatever you say," she replied with a nod, not pushing the matter, for which River was grateful.

They made their way up on deck and found the others staring out to sea with expressions of apprehensive wonder on their faces. The captain was there, as well as many of his crew. More members stood on the upper viewing platforms on the superstructure, and more still looked out of windows in the wheelhouse. Out to sea, the broken ice at the fringes of the polar cap had finally come into view. River realised they would be cleaving through it, soon enough, but that wasn't what everyone was gaping at.

"What is this about?" asked a voice from behind River. She almost jumped, and turned to see Lind had joined them on the deck. There was no indication that she had just been pulled out of bed: her hair and cosmetics were neat and her eyes clear and cool as ever, without a hint of sleep in them.

"What is _that?_ " demanded the captain, pointing out across the frigid waters. Above the horizon, a great plume of red was rising into the sky. It seemed to be its own light source and glowed dully against the dark sky and powder fine scattering of stars.

"That looks like the Aurora Borealis," replied Lind, her expression frosty. "It's beautiful, I'm sure, but I'm not sure why have you called us up here in the middle of the night to look at that, Captain?"

The captain gritted his teeth.

"I've sailed the Arctic and Antarctic for more years than you've been alive, Miss. I've seen the Aurora Borealis enough times to know that _that_ –" he jerked a thumb at the light-show, "– is _not_ the Aurora Borealis!"

River knew enough about the northern lights to agree with him. The aurora was formed by charged particles from the sun interacting with the earth's ionosphere creating light blooms that spread spectacularly across the sky in shifting hypnotic displays. This was not dissimilar, but only a single unmoving column stretched upwards, strands of red light twisting around it and sparks of light falling from its flanks. It also seemed to be moving upwards into the night sky, only to fade and disappear at high altitude.

"Is that where we're going?" whispered Amy, a short distance away. River could hear the touch of fear in her voice.

The captain glanced at her, then looked back at Lind, a glower on his face that put the ill omened sky to shame.

"I'll ask you one more time," he said, "what is that?"

"I don't know," replied Lind, her icy façade cracking for just an instant, anger flashing in her eyes, before she covered it up again. "It is no danger to you or this ship, captain. Nerv has flown pilots through it and suffered no ill effects. It is likely an atmospheric effect held over from the geological upheaval during Third Impact."

"You flew _planes_ through it?" asked Kiara, aghast at the possibility.

"Yes, we did," replied Lind, "and I repeat: it is no danger to you or anyone else on board this ship." She turned away. "I suggest you clear the deck and send everyone back to their bunks, captain. My team especially will need as much rest as possible in order to be ready for the journey still ahead."

She stalked from the deck, descending the steps that led to the interior of the ship.

"Does that mean she'll be coming with us?" Alex whispered to Natalie.

"I sincerely doubt it," replied the sixteen-year-old.

 _And I sincerely hope not_ , thought River, watching the woman disappear, with great dislike on her face. Lind was Nerv through and through, anyone could see that. River didn't normally dislike by association, but Nerv were responsible for her parents death, so it was difficult not to. And anyway, Lind didn't exactly make it difficult to dislike her...

* * *

They crunched into the ice early the next morning and began cleaving their way northwards. The sound of grinding ice became their constant companion as they pushed on. It was a strangely regular sound and almost comforting in its lack of drama. Aside from the odd clunk of loose ice hitting the hull, nothing in the sound suggested what was happening was not precisely what was _supposed_ to be happening. The ship simply continued to chew up the ice as it moved onwards, never complaining, or giving any indication that things were not as they should be. By contrast, the red lights remained in the sky, a constant feature at night and even faintly visible during the few hours of sunlight.

Standing on the fore viewing platform with her sister beside her, Amy found the sound of the ship's passage to be a welcome distraction from the feeling of some kind of impending catastrophe that she felt every time she looked up into the red-tinged sky. In the half-light of Arctic pre-dawn, however, it was difficult not to look up at the column of light, even with the distraction of the ship doing what it did so well. The weight of the doom-laden sky almost made her wish she and her sister had refused the man that had come on behalf of Nerv and had instead stayed in the UK.

When she and Kiara had first been contacted, it had all seemed like a grand adventure. The idea that Nerv had any interest at all in either of them had been flattering. Her parents had been conflicted about the whole thing: on the one hand, they were both keen that their daughters experience the world. With the loss of easy global communication, and the contraction of life down to small geographical areas within which survival was now the first aim, social and economic recovery second and everything else, including personal growth and mental enrichment a distant third, both her mother and father wanted their children to have the opportunity to see the world as they had seen it before Third Impact, to not be restricted to their home and their recovering community in the heart of England during their important formative years.

On the other hand, they were aware of the peril of going out into a world where law and order had broken down to a great extent, where international boundaries were blurring and where people might not be as grateful and friendly and hopeful as they were at home. And they were also worried about the re-emergence Nerv...

"One piece of advice," their father had told them, drawing them aside before they climbed into the car that would take them to Portsmouth docks. "Don't trust anyone you meet on this 'trip', do you understand? You can like them, you can rely on them, but never give up your distrust. Not for anyone."

He had looked back at their mother, who watched on from the entrance to their home, still seated in the wheelchair she needed to move around after her accident. She had smiled bravely at her daughters and nodded in agreement.

Amy understood her father's sentiment and she knew Kiara did too, but having met the rest of her team, she found it difficult to believe they could mean her any harm. Alex was really nice, Marco, too. Natalie was a bit hard-headed, but she was also patient and kind-hearted. She also seemed to keep an eye out for them when they were interacting with the crew, both in the ship's mess, or the small lounge, often sitting next to them and joining in their conversations. She almost seemed protective of the girls, something which they both found funny as Natalie was barely half a year older than them. And it wasn't even that she needed to be: the crew as a whole seemed to enjoy having the sisters on board, organising activities and parties for them, and every one behaved themselves admirably in their presence, even keeping the bawdy jokes to a minimum (although most only spoke Russian, so any bawdy jokes would likely have been lost on them). Even the captain, who had seemed so stern and unfriendly when they first boarded, was the perfect gentleman with them – though Amy suspected he had somewhat paternal feelings towards herself and her sister.

River was always distant, but she seemed to have her own issues. Most of the time she kept to her own seclusion, either in her cabin, or in some dark corner within the _Tor_. Nevertheless, she never once turned harsh words on Amy or Kiara, even when she had politely declined their advances at friendship.

The only person she found it difficult to warm to was Lind. That was partly because she hardly ever stepped outside her cabin – but even when she did, there was a coldness to the lady that Amy found unsettling. Despite her easygoing nature, Amy did not make friends readily. She was shy and found it difficult to talk to strangers or distant acquaintances when her sister wasn't present. Kiara had always been the more outgoing of the two, but she, too, held reservations and had even confessed to Amy one night in their cabin that she didn't like or trust Lind. They were agreed that there was something... _lacking_ about the Nerv lady. A human warmth perhaps. Maybe a sense of any kind of common sympathy. It was almost as if she was not invested with the heart of a real person at all...

Amy felt guilty about thinking of someone else in this way, but that did not stop her from acting cautiously whenever Lind was present.

Not that she had to worry about that much. Lind hardly ever came out of her cabin, proving to be almost as elusive as River. In fact, considering the lady was supposed to be their leader and commander, Nerv's contact with the ship, she gave almost no support to the group whatsoever. Amy and the others instead looked to Natalie for a heading. Even Marco seemed content to follow her lead, while Lind (or the Ice Witch, as Kiara had begun to call her), remained sequestered in her cabin. It was easy to imagine the lady scheming and conniving from within her room, though Amy felt unkind doing so, despite the Nerv lady's unfriendly nature. But the lack of information about where they were going and what they were to do when they got there didn't help her cause.

They were supposed to be on a simple mission to retrieve an artefact, almost an archaeological expedition, if Lind was to be believed. But, of course, Amy didn't trust Lind. Something told her they would be in danger, though what kind of danger, she didn't know. The red sky ahead of them had something to do with it, she was certain. And if they were in danger, what was she supposed to do about it? Could she protect herself? Could she protect the others?

As they stood on the deck, watching the ice grind under and around the boat, Amy looked across at Kiara. Could she protect her? Was she strong enough to keep whatever dangerous future awaited them from harming her sister? She knew she would die for her sister if necessary, but when it came to it, would she be strong enough, or quick enough to do so?

What if she wasn't?

That thought alone almost made her heart break.

* * *

Kiara leant on the rail overlooking the foredeck, surreptitiously stealing glances at her sister in the early morning light. Amy had been silent for a long time, staring at the sky, occasionally glancing down to the ice as it slid and scraped under the boat. Kiara could tell she was thinking hard from the slight squint she had and the furrow that troubled her brow.

She would be thinking about how she could possibly protect Kiara in the event of any number of imagined disasters, Kiara had no doubt. The thought made her smile slightly. Amy could be such an idiot sometimes... innocent and guileless, and yet she was everything to Kiara. She'd probably not even thought that the same thoughts would be passing through Kiara's head, even as they passed through her own.

Her sister had always been like this, ever since they were small. She was the more shy of the two, less likely to trust strangers, but she had always been a sweet girl, kind and loyal, fun loving when she wasn't hiding behind her sister so she didn't have to talk to people she didn't know.

Kiara had been the more confident of the pair, more outgoing and bolder in a lot of situations, but she loved her sister and was protective of her, taking care never to leave her behind. Amy reciprocated that care and then some. One time when they had been very small, Kiara had got into a fight with a boy their age who had called her father a bad name, and when the boy knocked her down (a lucky punch, Kiara swore to this day) Amy had run at him, screaming at the top of her childish lungs until the boy made a hasty retreat. Then she had found a handkerchief to tend to the blood on Kiara's broken lip and held her and hummed softly as she cried until at last all her tears were spent.

So Kiara knew exactly what Amy would be thinking. She would be so preoccupied about protecting Kiara, she wouldn't even think about herself. But that was fine: Kiara would protect Amy and Amy would protect her. She knew it. After all, she had promised their father.

Her father, originally a Japanese national before he had met their mother and taken up residence in the UK, had been one of the chief designers in the research and development department of Nerv Germany. His work meant he had to do plenty of travelling, but even so he was able to spend most of his working life at home, at his design bench in his study. As such Kiara and Amy had seen him plenty as they grew up.

His work, especially, fascinated Kiara. He had been a weapon's designer and had chiefly been responsible for designing the technology that went into the creation of the giant progressive knives that the Eva units had all carried, the weapons that had proved to be so deadly in so many situations. It might not have been an exaggeration to say that her father was responsible for the defeat of several of the Angels himself – not that he would receive much recognition for that fact these days. Kiara found that thought saddening.

If anything, their mother had been away more, employed as she was by Doctor Akagi at Nerv Japan. That was, of course, until her 'accident'. That's what the official Nerv documents had called it, though in reality, she had been severely injured during Zeruel's attack on Nerv HQ. Her mother had been lucky to be alive at all, having been buried in a collapsed corridor for several hours. When she was finally rescued, she was sent home to the UK to recuperate and so ha fortunately missed the events leading up to Third Impact, when Nerv headquarters had been stormed by Japan's own military and its inhabitants and employees – the guilty and the innocent alike – had been butchered in their hundreds.

Her field had been theoretical physics, so she had a keen mind, and a thirst for new knowledge. Amy took after her in her inquisitiveness and her curiosity. She had been so excited at the prospect of seeing the Arctic, she had hardly slept the night before they left, keeping Kiara up with tales of the exploits they would get up to, then yawning in the car all the way down to Portsmouth. She had been so happy and so excited.

Now that excitement had almost entirely vanished as she looked into the sky. Kiara saw only concern in her sister's face and that alone was enough to make her wish they had never come. She wanted her sister to be happy and smiling, not worried that those around her were in danger.

But she would never tell Amy that, because even with the danger, Amy still wanted to be here. And, in truth, so did Kiara.

Footsteps echoed off the metal deck behind them and a tall figure stepped between the two girls, resting strong, yet worn hands on the railing.

"It is too cold for young children to stay out as long as you two insist on doing," said a heavily accented voice.

They both looked up into the face of the captain as he stared up into the sky.

"Good morning, _baryshni,_ " he said. "I hope you are both well, this morning."

Kiara grinned.

"Not so bad that a little cold will kill us," she told him, "well, not before an old codger like you, anyway!"

"K-Kiara!" exclaimed Amy. The captain looked at her, sidelong, his flinty eyes shrewd.

"Hypothermia and exposure are no laughing matter," he said. To which Kiara shrugged.

"Neither is that light out there," she said, "yet we're sailing straight towards it."

The captain nodded and chuckled darkly at that.

"The strange things humans do, when they ought to know better..."

They all looked back at the light in the sky, silent for a while.

"What do you think it is?" asked Amy, after a while.

"I don't know, but I think it is dangerous," replied the captain. "You should be careful, _baryshni_ , both of you."

"Are you worried about us," asked Kiara, with a smile. "Careful captain, you'll not be able to keep up your stern façade."

"Hah!" exclaimed the captain, without a hint of mirth. "It's not just you I'm worried for. My ship, my crew. Even if that light isn't dangerous, those on board might be in their pursuit of it!"

"What do you mean?" asked Amy, curiously.

"Lind," said Kiara. But the captain shook his head.

"Not just her. We took on more crew in Murmansk, before all of you came aboard. Men I don't know. Oh, you might not see it, but there is a tension in the crew, and not just because of this 'mission' of yours."

"You think they might be here with some kind of agenda?" asked Amy.

"Perhaps," he nodded, frowning. "Yes, perhaps. There may be many on board with different designs, even among your friends. It is a dangerous mix, especially with that Lind lady. And, anyway, nothing good ever comes of associating with Nerv."

"You sound like you've had dealings with them before," said Kiara.

"Once," nodded the captain. "A long time ago, sailing different waters."

He left it at that and they didn't press him further. Instead, he sighed and stretched his shoulders.

"I am getting far too old for adventures like this," he told them. "Seafaring is certainly an addiction and in the Arctic, the ice water gets into your blood, but even then you can only take the cold for so long. This might be my last journey into the Arctic, hopefully then I can go home. Somewhere warm. Preferably somewhere with plenty of chilled vodka."

He turned away from the sight and leant against the railing. When he looked at them again, there was suddenly a wry smile on his face. It was the first time they had seen such an expression on the man. It took years off him.

"I spoke to your lady, Lind, earlier this morning and she tells me we'll be spending a few days in the polar region, no more than that. Then we'll all be able to go home."

Amy and Kiara looked at one another.

"I don't trust Lind," said Amy.

"Neither do I," agreed Kiara.

"I hear you, _baryshni,_ " said the Captain.

* * *

The _Tor_ killed its engines and came to a halt around midday the next day. They were let down onto the ice shortly after and the process of organising for their – hopefully short – expedition got under way. Metal and plastic cargo boxes were brought off the ship, and a long, tracked conveyor assembled. This would be their means of transporting the lance back to the ship once it had been located. Marco set about testing the curious contraption, checking the controls worked via the remote handset he would carry. Next he made sure the long range radio was in working condition and finally a satellite telephone in a small carry case. This was what he was here for. He was the technical expert, after all. He would be the team's link back to the boat should anything go wrong and, as such, Natalie saw him as the most important member of their group – even more so than herself.

The others packed emergency supplies into backpacks, additional clothing, rapid assembly storm tents, flares and other sundries.

Natalie oversaw them all, helping where her help was needed. She was vaguely aware of the Nerv lady approaching, and sure enough, when she straightened from crouching over her own pack, she was standing behind her, wrapped tightly in a weather-proofed fur-lined coat. Her cosmetics were as flawless as ever, even in the harsh conditions of the Arctic. Lind handed her a boxy little hand-held electronic device.

"What's this?" asked Natalie.

"I don't think you'll need it," she said nodding to the red column ahead of them, "but on one of the flyovers Nerv conducted, a transponder was fired into the ice crust at the target site. That locator should lead you straight to it. There's a second transponder on board the Tor, so when you have the lance, simply retune the locator to its signal and you can find your way back."

Natalie nodded and tossed the locator to Marco, who caught it.

"That'd be my field of expertise, then," he grumbled, clipping the device to his belt. "More for me to carry."

Natalie nodded at him, then turned back to Lind.

"Who from the crew will be coming with us?" she asked. Lind looked at her, her expression inscrutable.

"You have all the team you'll need," she replied.

Natalie glance at the others, then looked back at Lind, incredulity on her face.

"You expect us to do this on our own? Lind... with the exception of Marco, they're all kids! Hell, so am I!"

Lind folded her arms.

"We have reason to believe the presence of non-potentials may interfere with your ability to retrieve the lance. Longinus may react unfavourably to ordinary people. That's why we're stopping the Tor here and not taking you the last distance."

"Then why is Marco coming with us?" asked Natalie.

"It's unlikely he'll be enough of a disturbance to prevent your latent abilities from working. And if he is, just send him away."

"Great!" muttered Marco. The ever present smile that had been on his face earlier in the voyage had long since disappeared, it seemed.

"There's something you aren't telling me..." said Natalie, gritting her teeth. The woman merely regarded her, coolly. "God damn you, Lind! What are we going to find out there?"

"Your mission is clear. Locate the lance and retrieve it. If you can't do that, this has been a wasted journey. Months of planning and scarce resources will be wasted – we'll have to return to Murmansk and find some other way of completing this mission. If that's what you want, you can make your own way home from there."

"Murmansk is a world away from where Marco or I live!" exclaimed Natalie, shocked. "And it's not much better for the others! You'd be stranding us!"

"Then I suggest you complete your mission," replied Lind, with finality. "Marco will have the long range radio and the satellite telephone, so you will not be cut off. If you get into trouble, contact the ship and we will work out a way to retrieve you."

This was working out even worse than she had expected. Natalie looked at the others, chewing her lip as she did.

 _Five souls. Six including me. Not a very auspicious number... but I suppose I'll have to take what I can get._

She looked back at Lind.

"Fine. We'll perform this retrieval, but you'd better have a backup plan if things go wrong."

And with that, she turned on her heel and marched across the ice to where Alex and the others were waiting.

* * *

There was one final, unwelcome surprise to come, however. Several further cases had been brought off the ship and cracked open. Their contents were displayed on the upturned lids: pistols and knives and other weaponry.

"What's all this?" asked Alex, looking at the arsenal arrayed before him.

"They're added insurance," said the crewman unpacking the cases.

"What's that supposed to mean?" replied Alex. He looked across at Natalie. "Nobody said anything about fighting!"

Lind crunched across the snow.

"This is simply in case of emergencies. If wild animals or polar bears attack you, you have some form of self-defence."

"There haven't been polar bears since Second Impact," growled Marco.

Lind sighed, a perfect picture of exasperation.

"Very well, if you can't work it out yourselves! We can't rule out the possibility that other agencies or even militant groups have been drawn to this light-show." She pointed to the sky. "Nowhere is safe these days... but if you want to go out into the wilderness without these weapons as protection, then be my guest."

At her side, Natalie heard River mutter something under her breath. Natalie looked at her sharply.

 _"Half-truths..."_ she had whispered. As she looked at the girl, she found her dark eyes looking back from beneath her hair.

 _Does she know something?_ Natalie found herself wondering. She glanced around. Whether the others heard what the young German had said or not, Natalie wasn't sure.

One of the cases contained several short, boxy submachine guns with attachable shoulder rests. Kiara picked one up, looking at it disbelievingly.

"What are we supposed to do with these? We've never fired a gun in our lives!

"I can take you through the basics," offered the crewman.

"What good will that do?" replied Kiara, angrily. "We've never been in combat, we don't know how to react! We've never shot at anybody! We've never even _held_ one of these before!"

"Kiara," said Amy, placing a hand on her sister's arm, "it's fine." She turned to the man. "I'll take one. Just... show me how to use it."

The man talked her through working the slide, making sure the safety was engaged (or disengaged if her intent was to use it), and checking and reloading the clip. He showed her how to hold it and aim, the attached stock held against her shoulder. She and the others even fired a few bullets out into the white expanse of wilderness, before returning the safeties to the 'on' position.

"Short bursts... short bursts..." Amy recited to herself, a short time later as she tested the heft of the gun in her hands. "Stock tight to the shoulder. Short bursts..."

"Are we all ready?" asked Natalie, picking up a pistol and attaching the holster to her belt.

"Aren't you going to take a bigger gun?" asked Alex, as he slung one of the subs over a shoulder.

"Don't need it," replied Natalie, picking up her blue fabric case and slinging it over her own shoulder. "Anything anybody else needs, they better take it now."

"Hang on," said Kiara.

She went back to the opened cases and, after briefly scanning the contents, picked up a large hunting knife, strapping it to her belt. When the others turned incredulous eyes on her, she shrugged, smiling sheepishly.

"Just in case."

Marco was looking at the transponder locator, Natalie moved to him and patted him on the shoulder.

"How far are we supposed to trek?"

"Six miles, due... that way," he replied, pointing and grinning.

Six miles. Six souls on the ice. Natalie didn't like the implications of that. Still, there was nothing to be done about it now.

She pulled her hood up and set her wind mask over her face. Then she signalled to the others and they set off, trudging across the snow away from the ship.

* * *

It wasn't long before they were struggling. The ice was fairly flat, but the shifting snow crust itself made the going harder than it would have been otherwise. Add to that the worsening light and the fact Amy, Kiara and River were inexperienced hikers and unused to carrying full packs, weapons and all, and things were going slowly, the Sakurai twins soon lagging behind the others.

They took a break after about an hour and a half on the snow. Amy, Kiara and River sat panting heavily as Natalie passed around flasks of hot drink to warm them up. It was bitterly cold and the sun was progressing rapidly towards the horizon after its short stay in the pale sky. The wind had also got up, whistling mournfully across the strange scenery.

When they had recovered sufficiently, they set off again. This time, the girls seemed to have got used to their travails and they progressed more quickly. Amy slipped and fell once, but luckily no damage was done, beyond bruised pride, and they were able to continue on without much in the way of a pause for recovery.

The sun had set and the yellow-orange light had long since leeched from the deeper blue of the night sky when they came upon an unexpected rise in the Plutonian landscape.

"We go over," Natalie confirmed after a brief discussion. "It's not that steep and who knows how far round we'll have to go to avoid it."

And so, they struggled up the short slope and crested upon what turned out to be the lip of a wide, shallow depression in the ice. Alex was in the lead as they passed over the edge and began descending into the base of the odd ice basin, and he saw what it contained before the others. The young Briton stumbled a few steps down the gentle slope, dropping his pack at his side. If they could have seen his face behind his mask, they would have seen astonishment. In fact, the expression was mirrored on all of their faces.

In the depression, all manner of equipment and supplies, tents and tracked vehicles lay around and about. There were cases and crates and even two helicopters, but not a human in sight.

Everything was eerily quiet, even the wind seemed to have dropped away here.

"Someone's already been here before us!" exclaimed Alex.

"And they didn't get to stay very long," murmured River, at Natalie's side. She looked at her squad-leader, a haunted look in her eyes. "We shouldn't stay here..."

Natalie found herself agreeing. This wasn't a camp. The people that had been here hadn't even had time to set up that much. Everything was in a state of unpacking. The vehicles were parked haphazardly, tents were half constructed, their canvasses – those that still had canvasses – flapping in the wind where they remained unsecured. Packing crates were equal parts stacked and strewn about the depression, when she looked down, she saw hints of bullet casings poking out of the snow. There was a parked helicopter apparently whole and undamaged, but another was a scattered wreck, long since smoked out where it lay smashed and unusable, as if it had crashed while taking off or landing. Everything was covered with a sheen of ice and thin snow, but of the camp's occupants, not a sign could be seen.

"Look," said Alex, pointing. The crate he pointed to nearby was stamped with a familiar logo. The half leaf and quotation.

 _Half truths_ , thought Natalie, remembering River's earlier words.

"Lind never told us about an advance party," said Kiara. "What else has that bitch been keeping from us?"

"Kiara!" exclaimed Amy. She had pulled her mask down and her face looked very pale and her blue eyes were frightened.

"Well..." said Kiara and she gestured around as if the partial encampment was justification enough for her uncharacteristic outburst. Natalie was inclined to think it was more than enough justification. She had a very sick feeling in her stomach.

 _What have I got us into?_

Marco had knelt and pulled up a bullet casing from the ice. A rifle lay nearby.

"There was fighting here," he said.

"But against who?" asked Alex. "And where did everyone go? There's no blood, or anything."

"How long has this been here?" muttered Kiara. She looked at Natalie. "Days? Weeks?"

 _Since before Marco and I even set off from America?_ thought Natalie.

"I don't like this place," said Amy suddenly. "We should leave. We should go back to the boat."

Kiara stepped up behind her and took her arm, comfortingly.

"Nat," said River, more urgently. " _We can't stay here._ "

"What would you have me do?" asked Natalie, her emotions in a whirl. Every sense she had was screaming at her that there was danger here. But they had come all this way, could they really turn back now?

"We go on," said Marco. He looked around at them all. "We leave this death-trap and press on to the crater. We can turn back when we've reached our destination and seen whatever it is we've come to see. If it's too dangerous to recover the lance, we turn back."

Everyone looked at Natalie. After a pause, she nodded.

* * *

They trekked for a further twenty minutes, through the gathering polar darkness, the ice lit only by the ever more dominant red column, a dark new moon and an infinity of stars. When they finally came to the crater, they saw at last the source of the red glow.

It looked like an impact site, a deep crater formed in the polar ice, huge. _Huge_. It was easy to imagine it had been created by a part of the gigantic Rei-form crashing into the polar ice, yet instead of vapourising the area, some process of Third Impact had apparently flash frozen the sea water into its current state.

At the centre of the crater were strewn many dark oblong objects. They were surrounded by a ring of smaller objects. These smaller objects were apparently the source of the red glow, as it seemed to flow off them in waves, swirling slowly around before joining the great column rising up from the crater.

As soon as she saw the crater, flashes of images started in River's head, flashes of the dreams she had been suffering since she had returned from instrumentality. But now they were coming as she was awake, interfering with what she was seeing in real life. She saw blood, lots of blood, but whose blood it was, she had no idea.

"What is it?" asked Natalie, taking her arm. River realised she had collapsed to her knees without even noticing. "River! What's wrong?"

"N-nothing," she replied, struggling to her feet again. "Just light-headed, that's all."

"Can you go on?" asked Natalie, real concern on her face. River looked up at her and suddenly she felt a rush of both guilt and gratitude towards the other girl. She had cut herself off from the others for the entire journey, but now she realised she needn't have. Natalie was a good person. They all were.

"Natalie," said River, "thank you."

Natalie looked uncomprehending, but she nodded, nevertheless, managing a confused smile in reply.

They moved down into the crater, slowly and cautiously, leaving the conveyor parked at the rim, for the moment. River saw that the others, save for Natalie, had all taken their guns in hand and were clutching them nervously.

 _They'll be virtually useless, now,_ she thought, and then wondered why she knew that.

The snow inside the crater felt strange underfoot, soft, almost springy. It also felt less slippery somehow. They descended deeper into the crater and came upon the circle of dark objects, whereupon a horrible discovery was made.

"Oh my god! They're people!" gasped Amy.

 _The advance group,_ thought River. They had to be. This is what had happened to them, this was why there were no bodies or blood at the camp. They had simply been overcome by some unknown force and brought here.

Each person was kneeling, slumped, their dark clothing covered in frost. Their hands and faces were mostly uncovered and the flesh there looked swollen, an unhealthy ruddy colour, as though the skin had been exposed to the elements for too long. What looked like red vapour streamed off them, curling up into the sky. They looked both bloated and yet somehow diminished inside their clothing and apart from the breath making their chests rise and fall, they were dull eyed and totally unmoving.

"We have to help them!" said Alex, reaching for the nearest of the figures, a man. A bright orange flare threw him backwards before his hand even came into contact. He landed several feet away.

"Alex!" cried Kiara. And they hurried to his side.

"I'm okay!" said Alex, as they crowded around him. His shocked breath steamed in the darkness. "I'm okay... right? I'm not dead, am I?"

"Not unless the dead talk," said Marco with a dark grin. They hauled him to his feet.

"That was an AT field," said Natalie, in disbelief.

River remained crouched on the ground, both hands on her head. The visions were coming faster now: red eyes, white skin, pale hair. Pools of blood and death... death everywhere.

"You're not okay," said Natalie, kneeling down again. "What's wrong?"

"It's this place," replied River, around a groan of pain. "It's doing something to me." She looked at Natalie with dark, pain filled eyes. "Can we just get everything over with so we can get out of here!"

Natalie nodded.

"Let's go then."

With Natalie supporting River, they moved past the outer circle, giving the kneeling man a wide berth. Soon they were passing among the rectangular boxes they had seen on the aerial photos. They were bigger than they had seemed in the photo, about four foot wide and eight foot long, made of some unidentifiable black material that was smooth and glossy to the touch. There was something different, however, to what they saw in the photo. All of them, save one, had their lids removed and cast aside. They lay discarded on the snow, and the boxes, whatever they were, lay empty also.

"What the hell is this?" muttered Marco. River had no answer for him. None of them did.

They pressed on, towards the centre of the crater, where the only unopened box lay.

* * *

When they reached the final box, River sagged again, holding a hand to her face. Something was happening to the girl and Natalie didn't know what. She kept an arm around her, doing her best to be of some support, even if only with her physical presence. She knew a little of the girl's history from the files Nerv had given her: her parents had both been scientists, and had been involved in the Katsuragi expedition that had met with disaster in the Antarctic, when Second Impact had been triggered. River had only been a few months old when both her parents were killed. Apart from Marco, she was actually the oldest of the group, not far from her seventeenth birthday and was the only one of the potentials born _before_ Second Impact occurred.

None of this, however, explained what was happening to her now. Natalie watched the girl as she held her temples in her gloved hands, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. The dark rings under them seemed more pronounced, her skin even paler than normal. River looked haggard and in pain. Natalie wanted to help her, but she could not.

Instead, she held the girl close and turned her attention to the box, as the others surrounded it.

It was the same as the others, except it was sealed. There was no sign of a seam that they could get their fingers or any kind of tool into to in order to pry off the lid. On the top, six symbols were etched. They looked vaguely familiar to Natalie, but she wasn't sure why.

 _Six symbols, six souls... six miles back to the Tor,_ thought Natalie, fatalistically. She wasn't one for omens, but this place brought out the worst in her, in terms of superstition.

"So... do we open it?" asked Alex.

"Go ahead," replied Natalie.

She and River watched as the others each in turn attempted to force the smooth box to open.

They pushed and pulled, they even climbed on top and jumped up and down on it. Alex tried. Kiara tried, then Amy tried, then Kiara and Amy together. Even Marco had a go. Alex was trying for a second time when he finally lost patience and kicked the box, hard.

"Stupid piece of crap!" he yelled as he danced away, holding his foot.

There was a groan, all around them, as if the ice had suddenly come under great stress. They all froze as the groan subsided and died away.

"Did I do that?" asked Alex, looking astonished.

Natalie was about to answer when a vast throb of acoustic noise threw them all to the ground, each clutching their ears. It was followed immediately by the sound of a great horn, or the bass bellow of a huge creature. The twisting column above them pulsed with sickly red light, a gross imitation of a heartbeat.

"What's going on?" cried Amy, trying to shield her ears and head with her gloved hands.

As quickly as the sound had begun, it died away. The light also returned to normal.

"What the hell!" said Marco, as he clambered to his feet.

The others did the same, looking around. Everything seemed to be as it had moments before, except –

"Is the ice moving?" said Alex, suddenly. They looked about them and, sure enough, the snow and ice seemed to be shifting – stretching, as though countless fingers were pushing up from beneath, pushing against a thin membrane that yielded but didn't break. White shapes began to form from the snow, dotted all around the crater. _Hundreds_ of them.

Another groan sounded, this time cut with a resonant creaking, as if of ship's timbers under great strain. All around the coffins, the kneeling men and women began to _pop_ , bursting into orange-red liquid that sprayed across the snowy ground, dropping suddenly empty clothing to the ice. One or two of them cried out before they went, though none seemed aware at a conscious level what was happening to them.

"What is this?!" cried Amy, backing up against the closed box.

 _This does not look good,_ thought Natalie, _not good at all._

She pulled her pistol from its holster.

"We're leaving," she told them, "right now."

"But the lance –" began Alex.

"– doesn't exist," finished Natalie, "it's certainly not in this coffin, Nerv are lying to us about that. And even if they aren't, we can't get into it to prove it, so there's no way I'm staying here to die like _those_ poor unfortunate souls!" She pointed to the thinning ring of kneeling people.

The fingers of ice were resolving into definite shapes. _Figures_. They looked horrifyingly familiar. White skin, pale hair and red eyes.

 _Only they don't have red eyes_ , Natalie realised, _their eyes are black as madness, with only points of red to distinguish them from bottomless holes._

She grabbed River under her arm and pulled her to her feet.

"Let's go," she said, and she tugged the girl along into a stumbling run. The others had no choice but to follow. They all dropped their packs and ran, so as to be unencumbered.

As they ran, Natalie screamed at herself internally.

 _This is my fault! This is my fault! This is my fucking fault! I thought our status as potentials meant we had some value to Nerv, but what if we're just another advance team like the one turning to lcl all around us? And what if this is exactly what Nerv planned? What if we go back and the Tor isn't even there any more...?_

They would be screwed. Completely and totally.

A figure rose up before her, pale arms reaching nakedly for them. Natalie lifted her pistol and put a hole through its forehead. The figure staggered and fell away, its form dissolving back into the snow, but even as it disappeared, another formed to take its place. Or was it the same one? Natalie wasn't sure.

They ran on, past the circle of men and women, stumbling up the outer crater walls towards the conveyor. The others were firing now, but Natalie was happy to see they kept their discipline, even through the stress and fear, only firing off shots in ones and twos at the closest of the white creatures.

She and River made the lip of the crater first and they ran past the conveyor without stopping. The others were hard on their heels as they pounded down the outer slope, their lungs burning. Fortunately, there didn't seem to be any figures crawling out of the snow on this side. When they reached the bottom of the rise, Natalie immediately struck out across the flatlands as fast as her legs would carry her.

"I can't..." gasped Marco. And he collapsed to the snow covered ground.

"You have to!" replied Natalie, carrying on, not glancing back. River looked around at the others as they stumbled onwards. They were falling behind, torn between following and helping Marco.

"Natalie..." she gasped, even as she was dragged along.

"Natalie, _wait!_ " screamed Amy, shrilly. This brought her to a standstill at last. She rounded on the others.

"We can't wait! We can't stand around talking! Those things are coming!"

Kiara looked pleading.

"Natalie, _think_. They'll catch us on the ice! There's no way we can run all the way back to the Tor!"

"We don't need to!" exclaimed Alex, suddenly. "The helicopter at the Nerv encampment! I can fly us out!"

"You've flown helicopters before?" asked Natalie.

"Well... in a simulator," replied Alex. "But I only crashed a couple of times!"

They looked at one another sceptically.

"I don't see any other way," said Marco, heavily as he hauled himself upright again. Natalie nodded.

"The encampment then."

* * *

It had taken them twenty minutes to trek from the Nerv encampment to the crater. It took them a little over half that to get back at an unsteady run.

Natalie immediately sent up a distress flare, then she sent Alex to check and start the helicopter. Marco set up the radio and attempted to contact the _Tor_ , while Amy, Kiara and Natalie stood with their weapons ready for any pursuers.

"Maybe they aren't following us," said Kiara, looking at Natalie.

"They're following us," replied Natalie.

"I saw them," agreed Amy. "Coming over the rim of the crater. They were chasing us."

"They _were..._ " said Kiara, "maybe they gave up?"

"Stay here. Call me if you see anything," Natalie told them. Then she jogged over to the helicopter and handed her case to River, who was already inside. She looked a little better now they were clear of the crater.

The helicopter itself was of British design, a utility chopper, old army stock repainted black and orange, with the Nerv logo on the side.

"At least all the controls are in English!" said Alex, flicking switches and pressing buttons in the cockpit, "I struggle with Japanese and don't know a word of Russian."

"Will it fly?" asked Natalie.

"I'm still going through the pre-flight checklist... what I can remember of it, anyway. There's fuel, though... I think so, yes."

"Just get it started," said Natalie.

"No answer from the Tor," called Marco, a little distance away. "I'm getting nothing but static from the radio and the satellite phone won't connect, though the transponder signal is still transmitting. As far as I can tell, they haven't moved."

"Nat!" called Kiara, her voice alarmed. She patted River's arm comfortingly and jogged back to where the Sakurai twins were aiming their submachine guns across the encampment. Looking where Kiara was pointing, she saw the first of the white figures shambling over the edge of the depression.

"Weapons free," said Natalie, raising her pistol.

"What does that mean?" asked Kiara, at her side.

"It means shoot them!" replied Natalie in exasperation, and all three opened up.

The bullets appeared pretty ineffective, however. Those that struck home either passed straight through the humanoid creatures, or disappeared entirely, wounds instantly swallowed up by the strange pale flesh that was impacted upon. They did little more than slow the white things down.

Natalie heard the whine of the helicopter's engine starting up.

"Right, back to the helicopter," she told the sisters. They turned and sprinted back to the helicopter, only to find the blades weren't moving.

"There's something wrong!" yelled Alex. "The rotor must be frozen. Maybe the fuel, too, the engine isn't firing properly."

"What do we do?" asked Natalie.

"I don't know!" said Alex, looking frantic.

"How about this?" said River, holding up what looked like a large spray can. "It's de-icer. There's bags of it under the seats."

"I'll do it!" said Marco, grabbing the can from her hand and stuffing a couple more from the opened pack into his pockets.

"You've got to de-ice the engine intakes as well as the rotor!" shouted Alex. "Any ice shards that find their way into the intake could wreck the engine or the gearing and blow the rotor. If we're airborne when that happens..."

"Got it!" replied Marco, finding handholds and pulling himself up onto the roof with surprising strength and speed.

 _Desperation,_ thought Natalie.

He set to with the de-icer, as Natalie turned back to their pursuers, placing accurate shots into the nearest three and succeeding in downing two. The bark of Amy and Kiara's guns joined hers and several more were thrown back. But there were hundreds more, maybe thousands, all flooding over the rim of the depression and converging on the helicopter.

With a grinding squeal, the rotor began to move. Then the grinding sound disappeared and was followed quickly by the shrieking of the rotor as it freed itself up and began to spin easily. The blades quickly picked up speed and the judder of displaced Arctic air increased in volume.

"Get in!" yelled Alex.

The creatures were within ten feet of them now and closing fast. Marco swung himself down and Amy and Kiara scrambled in through the sliding side door of the helicopter. Natalie turned to follow. She was pulled inside by many willing hands as the helicopter began to rise, unsteadily.

Almost immediately that she had gained the interior of the helicopter, Natalie was thrown from her feet as the chopper jerked sideways. She sprawled to the floor, losing her pistol when her hand painfully struck the frame of the open door, and she almost rolled back out into the night – she would have, had it not been for the hands that grabbed her and held her tight.

The helicopter righted, but then slewed sideways again, this time in the other direction, pummelling into the crowd of white things, knocking many flying. Then another hand grabbed her, this one white as snow. It seized her around her left wrist, and immediately her entire arm went numb, even through her thick coat. She screamed and tried to pull free, but the hand dragged her inexorably outwards as the helicopter juddered and shook. A shape loomed over her, it swooped down and there was a sickening crunch. Then she was no longer being pulled out, she was being pulled in.

The helicopter jerked again, this time rolling backwards. Something under them hit the ground, but not hard.

"I've got it! I've got it!" cried Alex, wrestling with the controls. The helicopter righted itself and lurched upwards. They left the white things behind, they left the encampment behind, and they climbed into the night.

Natalie looked down at her arm and saw a hand still clutching her. It had been severed above the wrist by some means she couldn't immediately grasp. There was ragged white flesh and empty space where the rest of the arm and the malignant creature had once been.

She made a sound of disgust and shook it free, then kicked it out of the open door. Looking up into a terrified face, she found Kiara staring back down at her. In her hand was the large hunting knife. She held it up, somehow managing a lopsided half-smile.

"Just in case," she said.

* * *

Alex turned the helicopter towards the south and the _Tor_. The others fell into seats, too exhausted to talk about their narrow escape, or what was to come next. River sank back into her chair and fell into an unhappy doze.

As she slept, the visions returned.

At first they were like dreams, with none of the vividness that marked out her usual nightmares. She was warm, content. Her mother was holding her, her father was nearby... But how could that be? They had both died when she had been a baby, she had no memory of them.

They were leaving her... leaving her in the care of her uncle while they went south... far, _far_ south, where it was cold in the extreme. There was an expedition; she saw, a man leading it and his young daughter following along. A name... _Katsuragi_. They were all full of hope and excitement, though the girl held only resentment inside her.

A jolt of pain passed through her and her visions strengthened. She saw what they were after, an ancient being half buried in the ice... _Adam_.

Her parents were volunteering for something, for some experiment. They both stepped into a vast chamber, holding hands, but it went wrong, it went terribly wrong. They all died. Almost the whole expedition, everyone except the resentful girl and maybe a few others. Her parents were gone, but in their place... _another_...

A face screamed towards her, maddened black in its eyes, blood, a death and a rebirth, pools of red and acres of white.

Then she saw the coffin. The six symbols on its top were lighting up, one at a time. Then she saw inside and she saw... she saw...

Pale hair and red eyes. Intelligent eyes. The eyes of a being that felt. The eyes of an Angel. Eyes that looked back and _saw_ her. The eyes of Rei Ayanami. The eyes of...

 _RIVER..._

Her own eyes snapped open and she lurched upright.

"WAIT!" she cried out, startling everyone on board the helicopter. Natalie was immediately by her side.

"River? What's wrong?" she asked.

"We've got to go back!" cried River. She was almost sobbing as she clutched at the young American. "The box! There's someone in the box! We have to go back!"

"River, we can't! You saw that place, it was swarming with those things!"

"It doesn't matter! We have to go back!"

Marco joined them.

"And do what?" he asked. "You saw what happened last time, we couldn't get the damn thing open!"

"I'll do it!" she cried. "I know what to do!"

"How? _How_ do you know?" said Natalie.

"I can't explain... Just drop me on top of it, I'll do the rest! Please!"

Natalie looked at Marco, who shrugged.

"It's a wasted trip if we go back now. Worse than a wasted trip. Those things are loose. Who knows what they'll do?"

Natalie shook her head and looked at the Sakurai twins.

"I agree with Marco... we've come this far," said Amy, then she glanced at her sister. Kiara nodded and found her sister's hand with her own.

"Do it," she told Natalie.

"Alex, tell me we don't have enough fuel. Tell me _anything_ ," pleaded Natalie.

The Briton glanced over his shoulder, grinning.

"I can make maybe a couple of passes over the crater, but then I'd have to turn for home."

She looked again at the stricken face of River Knight.

" _Goddamnit!_ " said Natalie. "Okay, you win. Turn us around, Alex."

* * *

"If we're going to do this, we need a plan."

Natalie stood in the middle of the helicopter as she addressed them all.

"We can't just storm in and expect to have no trouble getting to the box. Even if we do make it to the box, if it takes any time at all for River to open it, we risk being overrun."

"What if Alex drops us directly onto the box?" suggested Amy, who had pulled open a storage compartment and drew forth a coil of cable rope and a rappel. "We can use these."

"You've used something like that before?" asked Natalie in surprise.

"We did abseiling at school," said Kiara, with a shrug. "It wasn't too hard to get the hang of."

Natalie looked at Marco, who nodded.

"So we drop straight on top of the box, then we can surround it and keep them back while River does whatever she's going to do," he said, holding up his pistol. Natalie shook her head.

"That'll buy us a bit of time, but you saw them before: there'll be far too many of them to keep at bay for long," she told him. "Our weapons are all short range, which means they'll be almost on us before they're much use. We'll be overwhelmed."

"Well then, what if one of us covers the rest from the helicopter?" called Alex from the pilot's seat. "They can take the creatures out before they get in range of River and the others."

"But who does that?" asked Amy. "And how? We don't have any weapons with a longer range..." She trailed off when she saw the looks on Natalie's and Marco's faces. "What is it?" she asked them.

"I think it's time, Natalie," said Marco. He nodded to the case. She looked up at him sharply.

 _Damn him,_ thought Natalie, _he checked up on me!_

"I agree," said Alex, looking over his shoulder and grinning. "I always wished I could get to see you in action!"

"You have to get back in the saddle when you've fallen off," continued Marco. "That's why you brought it, isn't it?"

She sighed.

"How much do you know?" she asked him.

"Enough," he replied. He looked sombre as he reached out and took her shoulder. "The boy lived, didn't he?"

"Barely," she said. "He recovered, but suffered partial paralysis and was taken off the program. I was supposed to be dishonourably discharged. In fact, I was in solitary confinement when the order came through for my release. They told me the bigwigs in the Marduk Institute had ordered me back on the Eva program, they didn't care about what I did, they wanted me for the next generation Evas. I didn't know back then it was Gendo Ikari issuing the orders... But he was trumped by SEELE's mass produced Evas, anyway, and Third Impact began shortly after..."

"None of that matters, now," said Marco. "All that matters is protecting your team. We need you in the chopper, watching over us. Whatever might have happened in the past, this time you get to be our guardian angel."

Natalie sighed and picked up her case. She set it on the floor and sent the zip all around its fabric covering. Then she unsnapped the clasps and lifted the lid. Inside was a rifle, broken down into many sections. She drew each one forth from its moulded padding, quickly assembling the long barrel, the sleek segmented stock and shoulder rest, the receiver and grip. Lastly she affixed a short optical scope to the top. There was a second, longer scope still in the case, but for the distances they were talking about, it would be virtually useless. The maker's mark was printed down the side of the rifle and bore the legend: _Aaronsen Mk XII "Sabre Effect"_

It had been a long time since she had held it, but even so it felt right in her hands. Natural.

"Wow," said Amy, her eyes wide.

"That's some piece of equipment," agreed Kiara.

"Let's hope it still works," replied Natalie, sliding a magazine into place with a click.

 _Let's hope_ I _still work..._ she thought to herself.

* * *

The helicopter powered towards the crater, cutting up the Arctic night at a pace. As they approached the spiralling column of red light, a thought struck Alex. He turned to Natalie, who had taken the co-pilots seat with her rifle leaning up against her leg, while the others set up harnesses and pulleys behind them.

"Lind did say they'd flown pilots through this and they were okay, didn't she?" he asked, suddenly nervous.

"She did," agreed Natalie, "though I wouldn't trust a word she says, so... who knows?"

"Great..." said Alex turning forwards again. Natalie smiled at him, then looked over her shoulder.

"Everyone ready back there?" she called. Four calls of the affirmative trickled back to her. "Let's get this done, then." She rose from her seat and patted him on the shoulder. "Take us in."

Alex swallowed, hard.

"Here goes nothing," he muttered, and he angled the control stick further forward.

The Helicopter swept over the site once, coming to hover low above the black casket. Amy and Kiara were the first out and rappelled down from the open door, with River and Marco following on behind. Kiara stumbled as she landed and Amy lost her footing and sprawled on top of the black casket. She scrambled upright in time to catch River coming down too fast behind her. They both took another tumble, but no damage seemed to be done as they pulled themselves up again and began detaching themselves from their cables. Marco was the last down, and, it turned out, was the most graceful of the four, his boots smacking flat onto the smooth surface and he retained his balance, bending his knees to brace the impact. In no time at all they were free of the cables and jumping down onto the ice.

The crater had been mostly clear when the helicopter had arrived (they must have passed over their pursuers on the way back), but as soon as the quartet's boots touched the ground, the white fingers began pushing up from the crater floor as they had before. This time, they didn't wait for their assailants to form, as Marco, Kiara and Amy opened up, putting the nearest fingers of ice down before they became figures.

Alex lifted the helicopter away from the crater, and began circling slowly. Natalie attached herself to a railing next to the open door and knelt, sighting down her rifle.

On the ground, more of the creatures were quickly forming. Natalie took a shot, which went some way wide of her intended target. She gritted her teeth and re-aimed, compensating for the movement of the helicopter. Her next shot was true and it split apart the creature she had missed, from the neck to the navel. Another shot decapitated the one next to it and both bubbled away into the snow. By now, there were scores more lurching across the crater towards the quartet.

"Must shoot faster!" she muttered to herself, grunting against the kick of her rifle.

Several of the creatures were looking up at the helicopter, with wide, midnight eyes.

"Yeah? What are you going to do?" Alex yelled at them.

What they did next, silenced the Brit. Two of them crouched down, then they launched themselves at the helicopter, streaking into the air.

 _Holy fuck!_ thought Natalie. The first missed the helicopter body, slamming into the rotating blades and exploding in a flurry of marshmallow white flesh. The helicopter bucked, throwing off Natalie's next shot.

Alex yelled an obscenity from the cockpit, as the second creature landed on the nose, hanging on to the windscreen glass with pure white limbs. As Natalie watched, the thing slid through the glass face first, as if it wasn't even there, reaching for him. Alex scrambled for his holstered pistol and fired three shots that knocked the thing back out into the night and put crazed cracks into the bulletproof glass of the screen. A twist of the control stick, sent the helicopter spinning sideways and the creature disappeared from the snub nose of the chopper.

Natalie climbed back to her feet as Alex wrestled the helicopter into a faster circle.

"What are you doing?" he asked her, looking back. "Shoot the things!"

* * *

River couldn't understand why it wasn't opening. She knew it should be opening, but as she sprawled on top of the coffin, it steadfastly refused to obey her. It should be opening just by her touch, that was what the visions had showed her: when they had been in the crater before, she had been overcome with pain and hadn't approached the black box. She was suffering now, the pain was terrible and the visions that bled in front of her threatened to obfuscate what was real and instead plunge her into a world of nightmare and shadow. This place wanted her away, it wanted to keep her from the coffin. _She_ was the key, though why that was, she had no idea. She wasn't special, or even skilled. And yet these white things wanted her dead before she could open the black box.

And _still_ it refused to budge. She tried touching the symbols, she tried pressing against them in all sorts of different combinations and still nothing. Looking around, she saw the others were close to being overwhelmed. Even the helicopter was spinning overhead as white things flew around it. They were all going to die, these good people, and it would be her fault: she made them come back.

 _I shouldn't have come here!_ she berated herself. _I should never have even set foot on board the Tor, I should have stayed on the dock in Bremerhaven port!_

In frustration she slammed her fist against the top of the coffin. Still nothing. Weeping now, her tears freezing on her cheeks, she sagged, resting her forehead against the top.

Something sparked. Some light grew and she sat back up suddenly.

Had the symbols lit up, albeit briefly? If they had, their light had quickly died away again. She looked at her fist, resting against the coffin top. In her black gloves, she could barely see it against the smooth dark surface...

 _The gloves..._

Realisation burned through her. _Stupid!_ Something so _stupid!_

Feverishly, she stripped the glove off with her teeth, and pressed her bare palm against the surface, hoping against hope. Like new suns, one by one they lit.

* * *

Marksmanship was the one area Natalie had been able to outdo Mari, but even this was beyond the pale for a markie.

The helicopter was performing a tight circle around the crater, but simultaneously jinking and spinning to avoid the flying creatures bearing down on them.

"I can't hit anything like this!" yelled Natalie.

"I've seen your scores from the Nerv pilot programme," called Alex in reply, "you're an excellent marksman!"

"But I've never had to snipe from a moving helicopter before!" she shouted, struggling to sight down the scope. Gritting her teeth, she took a shot and it clipped one of the white figures, driving it in to the snow. She lowered the rifle in amazement. "No problem!" she laughed. "I've totally got this!"

Her next shot hit centre mass of a creature that was making a lunge at Amy. It melted away into the snow at her feet. But there was no more time. A circle had formed around the quartet and was pressing in. The coffin had not opened, they needed to escape.

"Alex, take the helicopter down, we have to pick them up and get out of h–"

A sound like a mountain cracking open cut her off and a flash of light filled the crater.

* * *

Marco looked up at River, he saw her press her hand against the coffin top. He saw the symbols light up in turn, bathing her in sparkling white light that grew with every passing second. Of all the group, only he and River saw the last symbol as it lit up, the last seal, and suddenly a seventh appeared, larger and brighter than the others and growing brighter still. He knew the symbol. With a rumble, the top of the coffin started to move.

"Amy! Kiara! Get –"

A sonic boom exploded outwards from the coffin, blasting the white creatures back, knocking Marco and Amy and Kiara to the floor. Light spilled in a brilliant flash as the lid slid sideways, and a cross formed spearing out horizontally from the sides of the coffin and vertically straight up into the air. A cross. An _inverted_ cross. The light reached stratospheric levels, blasting through the column of red, dissipating it, scattering it to a fair wind.

River tumbled from the black box, Marco was just quick enough to catch her and break her fall. Then they lay on the floor, shielding their eyes from the light pouring forth from the coffin.

* * *

The engines stuttered in the face of the energy streaming past them and the helicopter began to fall.

"We're going down!" cried Alex, fighting with the controls. "I can't stop it!"

Natalie pushed her way to the cockpit and threw herself into the co-pilot's seat, belting herself in.

"Together," she said, looking him in the eye. He gritted his teeth and nodded.

The engines laboured and spurted, unable to keep the rotors spinning at the required velocity. Various warning chimes sounded in the cockpit, insistently telling them what they already knew. Alex did all he could to arrest the fall, but it still came down hard.

Natalie was gripping her seat at his side as the world spun in front of the windscreen. Snow and night and night and snow as they spiralled downwards. At the last second, Alex wrestled the sticks around, straightening them up, then the wheels hit ice, hard enough to knock the wind out of both of them. They bounced. For a second, the chopper teetered, its spinning blades threatening to hit the icy ground, then it righted with a second thump, as its wheels reconnected with the ground.

Struggling to breathe, Alex reached forward and shut down the engines. The rotor whined and began to slow. Then, as the helicopter powered down, they just sat for a few moments, silent.

"Does that count as a crash?" asked Alex, after a while.

"I don't know," breathed Natalie. She looked at him. "Did we really make it?"

"We made it," he confirmed.

* * *

When they left the helicopter, there was no sign of any of the white creatures. The ring of people had also gone, orange smears on the snow and bundled clothing marking where the last few had knelt not long before.

The inverted cross still blazed in the sky, but it was starting to lose its brilliance. Amy, Kiara, River and Marco were all on their feet, backing away from the glare, as Natalie and Alex joined them.

There was something in the light. A figure, coalescing where everything should have been annihilated. It was a human.

The white haired boy stepped out of the glare and onto the strange snow, his footfalls so light, he might as well have floated down amongst them. As the light faded, he looked around at each of them, his red eyes lingering longest on River.

"Thank you all for coming to my rescue," said Kaworu Nagisa.

* * *

 **Final: Genesis.**

As soon as the Helicopter touched down by the _Tor_ , Lind was on the ice, surrounded by armed crewmen. The captain remained on his boat, watching from the main foredeck, his hands tight about the railing where he leant on it.

They had seen the distress flare Marco had sent into the sky the night before, but Lind had forbidden any rescue party striking out across the ice. The captain had spent the night trying to get through on the radio, without success. Lind had the satellite phone, and had replied to his repeated entreaties that it was simply not connecting.

So it was a great relief to him when he saw the six-strong team stepping out of the helicopter. The relief even outweighed the perturbation that he felt at seeing the seventh member of their group, a pale, white haired boy who seemed unsettlingly familiar.

Lind was crunching across the snow, a small group of crewmen with her. They were carrying guns that they held with a familiarity that was out of place for ordinary merchant sailors. Lind came to a halt and pointed at the newcomer.

"Take that one into custody. The one with white hair."

Several of the crew moved forward to do he bidding, but River stepped in front of the boy, her arms outstretched and a furious expression on her face.

"No," she said. Nothing more, but it made the men pause.

"She's just a little girl," spat Lind. "Take her, too. If necessary, kill her."

They tried.

The first man stepped forward, reaching out to grab her. River caught the man's arm and twisted him around, sweeping his leg from under him. Suddenly lying on his back, he found her knee across his throat and his arm locked tight under her arm.

A second man swung a fist at her, but she released the first man and swayed backwards, avoiding the blow, before flashing out with three of her own, two into his chest and one into his jaw. The second man fell backwards, stunned.

The others came forward, pointing their rifles at River threateningly, who glared defiantly back at them.

"Captain!" yelled Amy, quite suddenly.

"I hear you, _baryshnya_ ," he said, raising a hand. There was a rush of footsteps as the remaining crew surged forward, surrounding Lind and her crewmen. They all carried guns, they all aimed them with purpose. More crewmen stood on the tor, aiming rifles.

"I don't like my crew answering to anyone else other than me," the captain told Lind as she looked around, slowly raising her hands. Her pretty face was marred by an ugly glower.

"Might I remind you, you're under contract to Nerv. This is a breach of our agreement."

"I've seen how much 'agreements' mean to you," replied the captain, grimly, then he turned to his crew. "Remove their weapons and take them all into custody."

As his men did as he asked, Amy looked up at him and waved happily, a bright smile on her face. Kiara grinned at him as well, and he couldn't help his weathered old face cracking slightly in reply. Then Kiara grabbed Amy under her arm and marched her towards the boat.

* * *

The _Tor_ made ready to depart from the North Pole, but some tasks remained to be completed before they could decide on their destination.

Those of the crew that Lind had under her employ, almost all of the men that had come aboard at Murmansk, eight in all, were disarmed and confined to their quarters. Lind herself was locked up in the mess hall until they could decide what was to be done with her.

Kaworu Nagisa was also confined to a cabin and, despite an uncharacteristically fierce protest from River, the captain posted two guards on his door at all times, telling her it was for _his_ protection as well as their own.

Natalie and her team were called upon by the captain to explain exactly what had happened at the pole, which they did to the best of their ability, though much of what had happened, even they didn't understand. The captain looked with particular awe on Alex's first time piloting of the helicopter (something Alex looked faintly embarrassed by), and of Amy and Kiara fighting off the hordes of creatures with their submachine guns. He also praised River's display when confronted by Lind's obviously trained accomplices, and Amy and Kiara were looking at the girl with a new found reverence at her unexpected fighting prowess.

"My uncle taught me," River explained, looking more deeply embarrassed at the attention she was garnering than Alex had, by far. "It wasn't anything special, really..."

But both Amy and Kiara were grinning at her and Marco clapped her on the shoulder and made a joke about it being _'the ones you least expect!'_

Then they were given a precious and well-earned few hours rest before the captain called for them to join the interrogation of Lind.

Marco was sent to find Natalie, when she didn't immediately appear. He found her in her cabin, but he had to knock twice before he got a response.

"It's not locked," he heard the girl call, faintly. When he opened the door, he found Natalie sitting at the small cabin's table, staring at her reflection in the mirror. The case containing her sniper rifle was propped up underneath the porthole window. For some reason, a curtain was lying on the floor near it.

"Are you all right?" asked Marco.

Natalie glanced up at him, then looked back at her reflection.

"I don't like looking at myself in mirrors," she said, as if that was an explanation for something. The curtain, perhaps? Marco watched the girl curiously. "You know what happened to me at Nerv."

It wasn't a question.

"I know that during an exercise, you shot and critically injured a colleague. It was all over the base at Nerv Massachusetts for weeks. A training accident, they said."

"It was no accident," replied Natalie. "The rifle I used to shoot him is in that case over there." She pointed to the worn, dark blue case, then looked up at him. "Did you know my mother worked for Nerv?"

Marco shook his head. Natalie smiled.

"I still have some secrets then," she said. "My mother worked at Nerv-02 as a chief technician."

"The Nevada branch," said Marco, and he started to understand. "The branch that disappeared during the S2 engine experiments."

Natalie nodded.

"My father was heartbroken when my mother died. It was no wonder he chose not to return from instrumentality...

"I took it rather worse than he did. Around the time the Nevada branch disappeared, Mari also went AWOL from the Massachusetts pilot program. She was my only real friend there. I lost the two most important women in my life within a few weeks. My best friend and my mother. I found myself alone at Nerv, and with Mari gone, they expected me to take the lead with the others."

"Weren't you given compassionate leave from the program?" asked Marco, but Natalie was shaking her head.

"I asked to be kept on – against my father's wishes, incidentally. I wasn't thinking straight. I was hardly thinking at all, actually.

"The exercise was a live-fire expedition into the Green Mountain forests that lasted a week. We were supposed to capture a flag that was defended by drones. I set up to strike from two angles, with me providing sniper cover from an elevated position. It required my team to leave me for several days while we trekked to different points from which to make our attack."

She shook her head at the memory.

"I guess it was the grief, the anger... all the damned trees. I started to lose it. After a few days on my own, I made it to my sniping point, but the others were delayed unexpectedly, so I had another day to wait while they caught up. A day with nothing to do but stare at my target from afar and brood.

"When the others finally reached their positions, the drones had caught on. They repositioned and formed an ambush that my team walked straight into. Only one got out without being tagged, and thinking the game was up, he went straight for the flag.

"I didn't know any of this, the drones had jammed our radios, something else I hadn't taken into account. When he broke into the clearing that contained the flag, I was watching through my sniper scope, but I wasn't thinking straight. He was someone I had known for years, but all I saw was the Nerv logo on his uniform. All I saw was my mother's death and the people I blamed for it... and the _anger_..."

"So you shot him?"

Natalie closed her eyes. After a few moments, she nodded.

"Kiara and Amy are lucky to still have both of their parents," she told him. "Did you know? The Evas house the soul of the mother of the pilot? It's why they worked better for some people than for others."

Marco did know that. He had seen it quite clearly when his mind was linked to Asuka, for the brief time she had been in the lcl before she had rejected the new reality. When he followed her example and left the sea of souls himself, he retained remembrances of her final battle with the mass produced Evas. It was a haunting memory.

"Yes," he replied.

"My mother's death would have been fortuitous for Nerv, so long as they were able to salvage her soul and transfer it to an Eva. I would have been the perfect pilot for them. River too, her mother died when she was a baby. Amy and Kiara and Alex... they would never have been suitable, because their mothers were alive, unless... unless Nerv contrived some way for their mothers to meet some kind of convenient end..."

 _You believe they were capable of that_ , thought Marco, _and in the end... so do I._

"Do you think mothers are important?" she asked, her eyes still closed.

"I don't know," replied Marco, a stab of unexpected pain passing through him. His mother had died along with his father, shortly after Second Impact. He barely remembered her. Natalie had opened her eyes and was looking at him, sympathetically, in the mirror.

"Ever since the training incident, whenever I've looked in a mirror, I've seen my mother standing behind me. She's always looked calm, never angry. But she's seemed... disappointed."

She leant forward, studying her own features, brown eyes and a pretty face behind her thin rimmed glasses, long dark hair pulled up in a ponytail, bangs that framed her face.

"When we returned from the crater, I thought I'd speak to my mother, I didn't care that her image was obviously not real, I wanted to do it for myself... But I no longer see my mother standing behind me when I look in the mirror. What do you think that means?"

"I don't know," replied Marco.

 _It means you've moved on,_ he thought, _that you've finally come to terms. You saved us Natalie. Your actions saved us all, maybe everyone on the planet. If any of us had been in charge, we wouldn't have lived past those creatures._

He didn't say this. Instead, he thought of something else.

"Those... things. At the pole. They were all copies, weren't they? They were the things from Instrumentality that took us all to the sea of souls. They were Rei Ayanami."

Natalie shook her head.

"There is only one Rei Ayanami. She... died. Those things weren't her. At best, they're ghosts of her, but even that seems wrong to me."

"Maybe you're right," said Marco.

"I'm always right," said Natalie, standing. She smiled at him. A gentle smile. Marco thought it was the first time he had seen one on her, or at least the first truly genuine smile.

 _She should smile more often,_ he thought, _she's beautiful when she does._

And he found himself blushing. Her smile widened to a grin when she saw that and she slapped him on the shoulder.

"Come on, let's go and see what Lind has to say for herself."

* * *

When they arrived at the mess hall, they found the others already there along with the captain and several of his trusted crew. Lind was handcuffed to a chair, with two burly crew members standing over her. She looked up at Natalie and Marco when they arrived and smiled a cold, dangerous smile, but she said nothing.

"Where have you been?" asked the captain, the old, stern look back on his face.

"I... overslept," said Natalie, with a grin.

The captain tutted severely.

" _Children!_ " he muttered, before turning to Lind. "What was your intent for all of this?" he asked her. "Why did you need to send children out on a dangerous mission to bring back this _boy_?"

Lind looked up at him, completely unafraid. Even restrained, not a hair was out of place and not a chink appeared in her mental armour.

"The boy you are referring to is named Kaworu Nagisa."

"I don't know that name," said the captain.

"Don't you?" she replied, the cold smile still on his face. "Whether you do or you don't doesn't matter, I'm as surprised as you to find him here."

"Is that why you immediately asked for him to be taken into custody?" asked River, a sour look on her face. "Is that why you told your men to _kill me_?"

Lind snorted.

"You stood in my way," she replied, "and by doing so, you stood in the way of the survival of humanity. I am always mindful to be working in mankind's best interest, but I am not afraid of making sacrifices for the greater good."

The captain stepped forward, raising his hand in a way that suggested he was about to strike her across the face. Lind didn't flinch.

"I also know about making sacrifices," he told her, "and I know what is sometimes necessary to get answers."

"There will be no need for that," said a voice from the darkened corner of the room.

They all turned in surprise to see a suited man standing there. He was old and grey, with an unremarkable face.

"Who are you?" asked the captain, as his men rounded on the man, aiming weapons at him. "How did you get in here?"

"I said there would be no need for that," said the man, stepping forward from the shadows. "And as for how I got in, well, I've been here the whole time. You just didn't notice me."

As he moved from the gloom into the light, Natalie's stomach lurched in recognition.

 _The man in the photo_ , she thought, _the one Mari warned me about._

"I know you," said Marco, unexpectedly. His eyes were wide. "You're name is Hooke. Conrad Hooke. You were a part of SEELE and a member of the human instrumentality committee."

The man smiled a knowing smile, his eyes shrewd.

"Ah, yes. The problem with coming back from the sea of souls is that everyone else who also returned knows a little bit about you, whether they remember you personally or not. It makes things like secrecy and anonymity terribly difficult to maintain."

"You and Keel Lorenz and the rest of your friends tried to kill us all," said Alex, arching threateningly, but Hooke just laughed derisively.

"Is that what you think Instrumentality was? The sea of souls still exists for those that didn't leave it. They aren't dead, they have ascended to a higher plane of life."

"If that's the case, then why have you returned? You got your wish!"

"It is true that the aims of SEELE were accomplished," replied Hooke. "As for my wishes? Instrumentality was not what I hoped for. It is a self contained gestalt, a chance for all hurt and fear to be extinguished, the opportunity for serenity..."

"As you wanted," argued Natalie.

"What good is serenity?" spat Hooke. "It was a dead end; the final destination for humanity. Nothing further could develop from the sea of souls. It was Keel's ideal, not mine. Keel was always the man looking for a solution - he was the realist. Me? I was always the explorer, I wanted to know the limits of our reality and how to push beyond them. He wanted the answers, _I_ wanted the questions."

"Well, now we have questions for you," said Marco, "what were you hoping to accomplish with this 'mission'?"

Hooke waved a hand, dismissively.

"You were a fact finding mission, the phenomenon at the pole was of great concern to me. The snow at the crater was invested with much of Lilith's being. Her flesh made up much of the area, it has anchored the ice cap to the sea bed and stopped its formerly endless drifting."

Natalie remembered the strange quality to the ground in the crater: how soft it had felt, how resistive. Had they really been walking on Lilith herself, even just a part of her?

"The red light in the sky was a by-blow of instrumentality, a remnant of the process that allowed the sea of souls to form," continued Hooke. "As for the coffins you saw, I'm less certain, although they may have been constructed as prisons by some means also related to Instrumentality. Maybe as a means of quarantining the lcl sea from... certain contaminants. It would explain Kaworu Nagisa's appearance there."

 _Thank you all for coming to my rescue..._ Kaworu's words sprung unbidden to her mind.

"So we were simply there to test this hypothesis? We were poking the hornet's nest? What if we had died, like the others you sent before us?"

"Then that would have been data in itself," replied Hooke. "Don't mistake me in any way, I am a pragmatist to the end. In fact, the outcome you have wrought might possibly have been the worst possible for me; you destroyed an interesting phenomenon and potentially set back my own goals by many years. But I get the feeling that fact pleases you."

He smiled at her. It was reptilian. She felt a shiver travel up her spine. Just what intricacies was this man hiding, and how far did his influence stretch? How many pawns did he have in his plans... and how long had he been moving the pieces?

 _I hope Mari is safe..._

Natalie moved in front of the man, determined not to be intimidated by him.

"So this was all just selfish manoeuvring, something to advance your petty power games?"

"Oh no," replied Hooke, "Lind didn't lie to you, the Angels _have_ returned. They represent an entirely new threat, however, although their existence still threatens our own. Coexistence isn't an option for them, and believe me, the survival of humanity _is_ in my best interests."

"So what now?" she asked him.

Hooke frowned.

"Now nothing. Now you go back to your lives. Now the game goes on without you." He looked around the room, then back to Natalie. "I would make one request of you, however. The boy, Kaworu Nagisa, I'm very interested in him and what he has to say for himself. I wonder if I might speak to this young man myself?"

Natalie's mouth hardened to a line.

"That is not going to happen."

Hooke smiled wider.

"What do we do with them?" asked Marco. "There are no prisons any more and we can't let them go. Do we... kill them?"

Natalie shook her head and looked at the captain.

"That would make us murderers. That might be all these two deserve, of course, but I wouldn't want to lower us to their level." She looked at the captain. "As we're so far from civilisation, sir, do you think perhaps it's time to revive an ancient naval punishment."

The captain looked back at her and, after a pause, he nodded, grimly.

* * *

They sailed south once more. When they reached open waters, Lind and Hooke were put ashore at the southernmost point of the polar icecap with sufficient clothing and supplies for several weeks on the ice. _Marooning_. The ancient naval punishment Natalie had spoken of. They could trek east or west in the hopes of finding civilisation before summer eroded the ice far enough to cut them off from solid land, or wait for the unlikely passage of another ship or icebreaker. Either way their future was filled with danger and hardship.

"More than you deserve," the captain told them as he dumped their belongings on the snow.

"More than we require," replied Hooke, smiling. "We will survive this."

The captain just spat at his feet.

As the _Tor_ sailed towards the horizon, Lind turned to Hooke.

" _How_ exactly will we survive this?" she asked.

Hooke smiled enigmatically and produced a small cube from his pocket no larger than a ring box. Inside was a key. A very special key.

* * *

It was a day after they left the SEELE man and his bitch behind that River worked up the courage to see Kaworu in his cabin.

With the captain's permission, she opened his cabin door and stepped inside.

Kaworu Nagisa was lying in his bunk, looking up at the ceiling. When she entered, he sat up, looking pleased to see her.

"Hello," he said.

She moved awkwardly into his room, watching him carefully.

"My name is –"

"River Knight," said Kaworu, "I know who you are... for some reason..."

He tipped his head and smiled.

"Why did I know you were in that box?" asked River. "Why did I know how to open it?"

"For some reason..." repeated Kaworu, his smile widening.

River frowned at him, _hard_ , but the smile remained on his face. She sighed and sat on the only chair in the room. They watched each other for a while, River trying to gauge what the boy was thinking and failing spectacularly. Eventually, she spoke again.

"I know who you are – _what_ you are – even if the others don't. Or they _pretend_ they don't."

"I'm just an ordinary person," he replied. She shook her head.

"You're anything but ordinary." She watched him a bit more. "I... see things that others don't. Memories. Dreams. Things I shouldn't know about. They're always centred around you."

"Is that so? I believe it's true that lots of people have memories they didn't wish for after Third Impact. I'm sure they'll fade in time."

"I don't _want_ them to fade," she told him fiercely.

The disarming smile faded. Nagisa studied her, his face unreadable.

"You were our enemy..." she started, falteringly, before strengthening her voice. A strange anger suddenly fired in her. "But you sacrificed yourself for Shinji Ikari."

And there was sudden pain in his eyes, pain that was almost breathtaking in its depth. It almost made her forget her anger, but not quite.

"Yes..." he replied. "I would prefer if you didn't talk about that... I... wanted to make him happy, but instead..."

"You drove him mad! You drove him mad and facilitated instrumentality with your death. That's right, isn't it?"

"I said, I would prefer if you didn't –"

"I know what you said!" replied River, hotly. "You don't get to make demands of me."

Kaworu's rueful smile melted whatever traces of hurt or anger were in his red eyes.

"I see we are almost kindred spirits," he told her. "You really are a strange one, River Knight. You know who I am, what I am potentially capable of, yet you still come to see me... to talk to me..."

All the fire went out of her. She sagged in her chair. Now that it came to it, this meeting that seemed to have been coming for a very long time wasn't going the way she had planned it.

"Nobody else on the ship wants to approach you," she told him. "They're all scared of you, even Natalie and the others."

"And you aren't?"

She regarded him, not answering his question. Instead she asked another question, the one that was really eating at her.

"Are you an Angel?"

Kaworu stretched back on his bed, leaning on his hands and turning his head on one side. The smile on his face was now enigmatic.

"Are you?"

The question surprised her.

"I guess... I suppose I am a lilim. If that makes me an Angel... I guess so."

"Then you can look at me the same way. We're both the same. The potential for destruction is locked in both of us, but so is the potential for kindness. For love."

River chewed on her lip.

"When we get to wherever we're going... I won't ever see you again, will I?"

"Probably not..." He shook his head. "No. Probably not."

Tears welled in River's eyes.

"... it's not _fair_ ," she said.

Kaworu smiled gently.

"No. The world never is, is it?"

"There's so much I want to talk to you about," said River, looking at him through watery eyes that threatened to spill tears down her cheeks at any moment. "So much I want to tell you!"

Kaworu swung his legs onto the floor and reached out to her. His pale hands touched her hot cheeks. They were cool, like a balm. His red eyes stared deep into her dark eyes.

"Then why don't we talk?"

* * *

When River stepped out of Kaworu's cabin almost an hour later, she found the others waiting for her in the corridor.

"So...?" asked Kiara.

"He's not here to start Fourth Impact," said River, looking at the floor. The others looked eased at that.

"Then what does he want?" asked Marco.

"He wants to help Shinji. He wants to help humanity."

"He's going to help fight the other Angels?" asked Natalie.

"I don't know what he's going to do," she replied, "all I know is he can't help Shinji directly and he can't go back to Nerv. He says it's no longer Shinji's time.

"What does that mean?" pressed Natalie.

"I don't know," said River, "but he says Rei has returned." There was a collective intake of breath from the others and she looked around at them all, her eyes dark. "He says she'll be searching for her old colleagues. She doesn't know it, but she's the lynchpin in all of this. She and the former pilot of Unit 02. Apparently, it's imperative that they find one another."

There was silence in the corridor for a long time.

"What do we do now?" asked Alex. "We can't take him to America or the UK. We can't give him up to Nerv, we'd be giving him straight back to Hooke."

"But we marooned Hooke in the Arctic Circle," said Amy.

"Don't be silly, Amy," said Kiara, "as if he won't escape somehow."

"So what was the point of marooning him?" asked Amy.

"To slow him down," replied Natalie. "To give us a head-start."

"A head-start for what, though?" asked Alex. "He knows everything, and we know virtually nothing. All right, we have Kaworu Nagisa, but we have no plan and no idea how to fight the Angels!"

"Let alone some old codger with delusions of world domination!" chimed in Kiara.

"I know what to do," said Marco. And they all looked at him. "We take him to an old friend of mine. We take him to Misato Katsuragi."

* * *

They landed in Murmansk and put ashore all those men that had been in Lind's (or rather in Hooke's) pay. Then they continued the long journey around the Arctic Circle, stopping in many ports, before passing through the Bering Strait and heading south towards Japan. The whole trip lasted several months, and the six of them had become quite used to seafaring by the time they hove into the New Tokyo Sea, the giant cratered bay that had once been the capital of Japan, before the Angels arrived.

Their plan was to contact Misato somehow when they arrived. Marco told them about a new city that was rising as the capital of the ancient country. They talked long in to the nights about what they were going to do when they arrived, how they would locate Misato, how they would search for her former colleagues. Talk often turned to their hopes and dreams, what they wanted to do from now on. Alex still wanted to be a pilot, his experience with the helicopter had only whetted his appetite for more such adventure. Amy and Kiara talked of home, but also of their long held desire to visit the country of their father's birth. They had both been to Japan before, but they had been so small at the time, they hardly remembered it.

Marco was looking forward to meeting Misato again, and maybe some of his other old Nerv colleagues – if they had survived. River simply wanted to spend as much time with the others as she could before they went their separate ways, to make up for how much she had missed before they had reached the crater. Amy and Kiara had come to idolise her, and had even asked her to teach them some basics of the martial arts her uncle had taught her, which she did to the best of her ability in the confines of the ship.

Natalie enjoyed all of their company, she enjoyed the journey and seeing all the new places they saw. What she mostly felt on their voyage was a strange sort of contentment, though it was tempered with a feeling that things were set to change, for better, perhaps... for worse, more likely.

* * *

The morning they arrived into port in Japan, Kaworu Nagisa disappeared. The men who were supposed to be guarding him swore that nobody had entered or left the cabin that morning, or during the night before. His chamber was simply empty, his door mysteriously unlocked.

In the preceding weeks and months, River had spent much time in his cabin talking to the boy, so naturally the captain's suspicion fell on her. He organised a search utilising the few men and women who had not already gone ashore.

They found River in the corner of the deserted mess, crying. Natalie warned the captain and his men off and approached the girl, sitting down beside her.

"Where is he?" asked Natalie gently.

"I don't know..." replied River, looking at her friend through tear stained eyes. "He never said anything to me. I thought he was on our side."

"Maybe he still is," replied Natalie, putting an arm around the girl, "maybe he just needs to do his own thing."

River nodded.

"Then all of this was for nothing!" said Alex, standing over them. Marco, Amy and Kiara stood behind him, looking defeated.

"No!" cried River, shrilly, looking up at him. "We _saved_ him! We saved his life!"

Alex looked taken aback at her outburst. Before he could reply, Natalie stood.

"We did more than that," she said. "We saved the world. And we saved each other."

"So what do we do?" asked Alex.

"I think we've earned a break, don't you?" She looked at Marco. "What did you say this new capital city was called?"

"Kaibyaku," he replied. "Apparently it means 'new beginnings'."

"Then that's what we need to find. I think it would be nice to see what new beginnings Japan has to offer before we all turn for home."

* * *

 **One more final: I need you.**

"Did you see her?" asked Alex, as he set the tray of drinks down and took a seat at the table in the corner of the room. The open plan café was on two levels, one a few steps up from the other. Their table was on the slightly smaller upper section, overlooking the main floor area where the majority of the customers sat.

"See who?" asked Kiara, picking up her drink and taking a sip. She pulled a face at the drink inside. "Is this sake?" she asked.

"They didn't have champagne," retorted Alex, "and I wouldn't have been able to afford it anyway – I didn't have enough money for any of the more expensive drinks. Besides, this is what the Japanese drink when they're celebrating. Anyway..." he nodded towards the main floor, a knowing smile on his face. "At the table over there, left corner of the main area. _It's Asuka_."

"Really?" squeaked Amy, almost spilling the drink she had been sipping.

"Should we go and say hello?" asked Kiara, craning her neck to see.

"No, leave her be," grumbled Natalie. "She doesn't need us pestering her. She wouldn't even know who we are."

"She might," said Marco, an enigmatic smile back on his face.

"Well, who cares," said Amy, "we're here to celebrate."

She took up her glass and held it up.

"I've always wanted to do this," she said, looking around at her friends, barely suppressed glee on her face. "To us! To being in Japan... _finally_. To defeating... whatever that was. To going to the North Pole! To fighting the impossible and winning. Kanpai!"

Kiara grinned and picked up her own glass.

"Kanpai!" she called. The others all raised their glasses in salute, adding their voices to the cheer and clinking together, before draining their drinks.

The door opened and they became aware of a sudden dip in the conversation flying around the room. As one, they looked up.

" _Oh my god, it's her!_ " whispered Amy, as all sound died away. They all stared in amazement at the apparition that stood in the doorway, complete with bandages and plugsuit, a medical pad over one eye, a vision of the old days before Third Impact.

"Pilot Sohryu..." said Rei Ayanami. And then nothing more.

One of the patrons stood abruptly, knocking a chair, clattering, to the ground. He pointed at the girl.

"It's her! The monster from the end!"

"Uh oh, this doesn't look good." muttered Marco, as a collective gasp went around the room and another patron spoke fearful words.

He made to stand up, but Natalie placed a hand on his arm.

"Wait," she murmured. She was watching Asuka carefully.

"Pilot Sohryu," said the girl, again.

Asuka stood, slowly, and every pair of eyes in the room turned on her.

"Is this real?" she asked, her voice unsteady. "Are you here for me?"

Rei Ayanami nodded.

"There was no one else... I..."

A sudden buzz went around the room that stilled as Asuka stepped forward. She looked around at the thunderstruck people, then quickened her pace, grabbing Rei's hand and pulling her back out of the silent café. The door swung slowly closed behind them.

Alex looked at the others around the table and smiled.

"I guess that's where we should make our exit."

"I agree," replied River, smiling happily.

"What now?" asked Kiara.

"Now...?" said Natalie, looking at them all. "Well, I guess we could always see what Nerv is up to."

The six stood and placed their glasses on the table. Everyone in the room watched them as they headed for the exit. Alex looked around at the mute patrons.

"What's the matter?" he asked them all, a grin on his face. "Never seen a ghost before?"

"We have," said Natalie.

And she opened the door.


End file.
